Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the uncrewed Surveyor program of the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it su ...

(NASA,

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). This lunar soft-lander gathered data about the lunar surface that would be needed for the crewed Apollo Moon landings that began in 1969. The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 on the '' Ocean of Storms'' was the first by an American

space probe Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which th ...

on any extraterrestrial body, occurring on the first attempt and just four months after the first soft Moon landing by the Soviet Union's

Luna 9 Luna 9 (Луна-9), internal designation Ye-6 No.13, was an uncrewed space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna programme. On 3 February 1966, the Luna 9 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and return ima ...

probe. Surveyor 1 was launched May 30, 1966, from the

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the sta ...

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, and it landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966. Surveyor 1 transmitted 11,237 still photos of the lunar surface to the Earth by using a television camera and a sophisticated

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telemetry Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', 'far off', an ...

system. The Surveyor program was managed by the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

, in

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the List of United States counties and county equivalents, most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 202 ...

, and the Surveyor space probe was built by the

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Mission description

The Surveyor series of

s was designed to carry out the first soft landings on the Moon by any American

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

. No instrumentation was carried specifically for scientific experiments by Surveyor 1, but considerable scientific data were collected by its

television camera A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on filmstoc ...

and then returned to Earth via the

Deep Space Network The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide Telecommunications network, network of spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA' ...

from 1966 to 1967. These spacecraft carried two television cameras — one for its approach, which was not used in this case, and one for taking still pictures of the lunar surface. Over 100 engineering sensors were on board each Surveyor. Their television systems transmitted pictures of the spacecraft footpad and surrounding lunar terrain and surface materials. These spacecraft also acquired data on the radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, the load-bearing strength of the lunar surface, and the temperatures for use in the analysis of the lunar surface temperatures. (Later Surveyor space probes, beginning with Surveyor 3, carried scientific instruments to measure the composition and

mechanical properties A material property is an intensive property of a material, i.e., a physical property or chemical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one mate ...

of the lunar "soil".) Surveyor 1 was launched May 30, 1966 and sent directly into a trajectory to the Moon without any

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. Its retrorockets were turned off at a height of about 3.4

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s above the lunar surface. Surveyor 1 fell freely to the surface from this height, and it landed on the lunar surface on June 2, 1966, on the ''Oceanus Procellarum''. This location was at . This is within the northeast portion of the large crater called Flamsteed P (or the ''Flamsteed Ring''). Flamsteed itself lies within Flamsteed P on the south side. The duration of the

spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such ...

of Surveyor 1 was about 63 hours, 30 minutes. Surveyor 1's lunar launch weight was about , and its landing weight (minus expended maneuvering propellant, its solid-fueled retrorocket (which had been jettisoned), and its

radar altimeter A radar altimeter (RA), also called a radio altimeter (RALT), electronic altimeter, reflection altimeter, or low-range radio altimeter (LRRA), measures altitude above the terrain presently beneath an aircraft or spacecraft by timing how long it t ...

system) was about . Surveyor 1 transmitted

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

data from the Moon beginning shortly after its landing through July 14, 1966, but with a period of no operations during the two-week long lunar night of June 14, 1966 through July 7, 1966. Because the Moon always presents the same face to Earth, "line-of-sight"

radio communication Radio is the technology of telecommunication, communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...

s with Surveyor 1 required only changes in ground stations as the Earth rotated. However, since it was solar-powered, Surveyor 1 had no electricity with which to function during the two weeks of the lunar night. The return of engineering information (temperatures, etc.) from Surveyor 1 continued through January 7, 1967, with several interruptions during the lunar nights. The landing of Surveyor 1 was carried live on some television networks, and the success of the first Surveyor landing was considered surprising, especially after the failure of a number of the Ranger spacecraft en route to the Moon. Justin Rennilson, formerly of

, stated, "We figured the probability of success at around 10 to 15 percent." Among hundreds of other challenges, an uninterrupted communication link for navigation and control was critical to success.

Science instruments

Television

The TV camera consisted of a vidicon tube, a zoom lens operated at either end of its range resulting in 25 millimeter and 100 millimeter focal-lengths, resulting in optical fields of view of 25.3 or 6.43 degrees, a shutter, clear, orange, green and blue optical filters, and iris-system mounted along an axis inclined approximately 16 degrees from the central axis of Surveyor 1. The camera was mounted under a mirror that could be moved in azimuth and elevation. The rotation of the mirror in the azimuth direction, while providing azimuth coverage capability results in an image rotation proportional to the angular azimuth position of the mirror. This is because the image plane and scanning raster of the vidicon are stationary with respect to the mirror azimuth axis. The mirror drive mechanism consisting of stepper motors provided a step size of 2.48° ±0.1° in elevation and 3.0° ±0.1° in azimuth. This calibrated stepping reference allowed the creation of large composite mosaics of the lunar surface and using the data read-back from the iris and focus positioning of the lens permitted some photogrammetric measurements of various lunar features.Montgomery, Wolf ''The Surveyor lunar landing television system''. IEEE Spectrum, August 1966, p. 55-56 The TV camera's operation was dependent on the receipt of the proper radio commands from the Earth. Frame-by-frame coverage of the lunar surface was obtained over 360 degrees in azimuth and from +40 degrees above the plane normal to the camera's axis to -65 degrees below this plane. Both 600-line and 200-line modes of operation were used. The 200-line mode transmitted over an omnidirectional antenna for the first 14 photos and scanned one frame every 61.8 seconds. The remaining transmissions were of 600-line pictures over a directional antenna, and each frame was scanned every 3.6 seconds. Each 200-line picture required 20 seconds for a complete video transmission and it used a radio bandwidth of about 1.2

kilohertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base ...

. Each 600 line picture required about one second to be read from the vidicon tube, and they required a radio bandwidth of about 220 kilohertz. The data transmissions were converted into a standard TV signal for both closed-circuit TV and broadcast TV. The television images were displayed on Earth on a slow-scan monitor coated with a long persistency phosphor. The persistency was selected to optimally match the nominal maximum frame rate. One frame of TV identification was received for each incoming TV frame, and it was displayed in real time at a rate compatible with the incoming image. These data were recorded on a video magnetic tape recorder. Over 10,000 pictures were taken by Surveyor 1's TV camera before the lunar sunset of June 14, 1966. Included in these pictures were wide-angle and narrow-angle panoramas, focus ranging surveys, photometric surveys, special area surveys, and celestial photography. Surveyor 1 responded to commands to activate the camera on July 7, and by July 14, 1966, it had returned nearly 1000 more pictures. File:Surveyor 1 shadow lunarsurface.jpg, Surveyor 1's shadow against the lunar surface (upside-down image) File:Surveyor 1 Fig 7-41a1.jpg, The mare surface File:Surveyor 1 Fig 7-41a2.jpg, Another view of the mare surface File:Surveyor 1 Fig 3-36a.jpg, Irregularly shaped crater at the landing site File:Surveyor 1 Fig 3-56.jpg, Mottled rock about 50 cm long near Surveyor 1

Strain gauge

Strain gauges were mounted on each leg shock absorber to record the peak axial forces at landing impact of the spacecraft. They were designed to accept a force of approximately 800 kgf (7.8 kN).

Legacy and status

On January 6, 1967, Surveyor 1 was reactivated for 12 hours. The spacecraft returned data on the motion of the Moon, which would be used to refine the map of its orbital path around the Earth as well as better determine the distance between the two worlds.

References

External links

Surveyor 1 digitized panorama with color photometric target
from Surveyor Digitization Project *
Panoramas of the Surveyor 1 landing site
from The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration by Philip J. Stooke
Surveyor Program Results (PDF) 1969

Surveyor I – A Preliminary Report – June 1, 1966 (PDF)

Surveyor I mission report. Part II – Scientific data and results – Sep 1966 (PDF)

Details of Surveyor 1 launch, and also more on the Surveyor program

Surveyor I images
at Lunar and Planetary Institute
Surveyor Site 1 Lunar Map
at Lunar and Planetary Institute
Surveyor Site 1 Lunar PhotoMap
at Lunar and Planetary Institute
Lunar Orbiter 1 photo 192
showing the northeastern part of Flamsteed P crater, where Surveyor 1 landed {{Use American English, date=January 2014 1 Spacecraft launched in 1966 Missions to the Moon Spacecraft launched by Atlas-Centaur rockets Soft landings on the Moon Derelict landers (spacecraft) 1966 on the Moon