Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the uncrewed Surveyor program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 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 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 probe.
Surveyor model on Earth
Launch of the Atlas-Centaur rocket carrying the Surveyor 1 space probe
Surveyor 1 photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009
Lunar surface centered on the landing site, photographed by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966. View is 7 km wide.
The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing.
Surveyor 3 resting on the surface of the Moon, taken by Apollo 12 astronauts
Astronaut Pete Conrad near Surveyor 3 during Apollo 12, 1969. Lunar Module in the background.
Launch of the Atlas-Centaur AC-10 rocket carrying the Surveyor 1 spacecraft, May 30, 1966
An engineering model of Surveyor 3, S-10, used for thermal control tests. It was reconfigured to represent a flight model of Surveyor 3 or later, since it was the first to have a scoop and claw surface sampler. (National Air and Space Museum)
