Everybody likes the winner, except us!
Surveyor 1 was the second uncrewed robotic space probe to perform a soft landing onto the surface of the moon. The U.S. probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on May 30, 1966, atop an Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle (or rocket as most people would say). The soft landing was a feat of engineering at the time; in order to land and not crash into the moon, the craft’s retrorockets when fired slowed the craft from a speed of 6,000 mph to 3 mph before landing.
The goal of the Surveyor project was to soft-land uncrewed probed on the lunar surface and to send back scientific information for use on later crewed missions, including information about surface temperatures. Pictures of the surface and information about the stresses put on the craft during landing comprised the main data obtained from the mission.
The first uncrewed probe to perform a soft landing on the moon was the Luna 9 probe, which was launched by the Soviet Union on January 7, 1966, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It landed on the moon on February 3, 1966. All prior probes sent to the moon were known as “impact” probes that crash-landed in the moon. Some of those crashes were on purpose.
| Project name | Surveyor |
| Craft | Surveyor 1 |
| Mass | 294.3 kg |
| Launch vehicle | Atlas-Centaur rocket |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States of America |
| Launch date | May 30, 1966 |
| Touchdown on moon | June 2, 1966 |
| Mission end-date | January 7, 1967 (last contact with craft) |
| Goal | Perform the first soft-landing on the surface of the moon by a U.S. space probe. |
| Experiments returned | The results of 2 experiments were returned: first, data from strain gauges to record peak axial forces on landing impact; second, television camera and images |
| Number of pictures taken and transmitted to Earth | 11,240 |
| Total cost of the Surveyor project (USD not adjusted for inflation) | $469 million |
The shadow of the Surveyor 1 space probe on the surface of the moon. (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Back to SilverMedals Referencepedia...
By the time astronaut James McDivitt stepped into the Apollo 9 spacecraft on March 3, 1969, he had already built a reputation as a solid and trusted American pilot and astronaut. A member of NASA’s “Second Group” of astronauts, his first trip into space came as mission commander of the Gemini IV mission in June 1965. That particular mission was…read more
Cheetahs are cool. They’re sleek. They’re majestic. They’re hunters who use their speed to chase down their prey. They’re the fastest land animals around, topping out in some measures at 60-70 mph. True, cheetahs can only maintain their sprints for maybe a half mile to a mile at most before needing a rest, but we don’t care. Cheetahs are just…read more
Venus is the planet second-closest to the the sun in our solar system and Earth’s nearest neighbor. The cloudy rocky planet orbits the sun at an average distance of 67,238,251 mi (108,209,475 km) at a mean orbital velocity of 78,339 mph (126,074 km/h). For us Earthlings, Venus also the second-brightest object in the night sky, with the first being the…read more
When Alan Bean retired from NASA and decided to become a full-time professional fine-art artist, he had to shed his aeronautical engineering and astronaut self to allow his inner artistic vision come through to the canvas. Not an easy task for the former Apollo 12 astronaut, one of only 12 men to have walked on the surface of the moon,…read more
Finner, razorback, flathead, common rorqual, herring whale, finback whale — these are all names for the fin whale, an animal that few outside of the marine biology or maritime communities know or care about. But it is a majestic animal with sleek hydrodynamic lines and curves that roams the world’s oceans gulping down plankton and fish in astonishing quantities. Second…read more
Sputnik 1 was successfully launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, becoming the first artificial object to reach Earth orbit. Having been launched during the Cold War era, this tiny, beeping, ball-shaped satellite caused great concern among many paranoid red-scared Americans for whom the event was not so much a great moment of scientific achievement, but rather a disconcerting development…read more
