The last Surveyor en route to the Moon

Surveyor 7 was the last of the US's unmanned probes to soft-land on the Moon. It was launched on January 7, 1968, and landed three days later on the rim of the crater Tycho. It was a fitting and spectacular end to the Surveyor series.

The key question the Surveyors needed to answer was simply, "Is there a solid surface that will support the weight of a Lunar Module (and a man)?"

Before we sent the Surveyors, we literally had no idea what the surface of the Moon would be like. Would 4 billion years of impact by microscopic meteoroids create a layer of fine dust that was several feet or more deep? We did not know. We could make educated guesses, and while most scientists believed that there was a solid surface, there was not a consensus in the scientific community. We had to find out, or we risked our astronauts getting into a dangerous situation that they could not escape.

In yet another of their Space Firsts, the USSR beat the Americans to a soft landing on the Moon by about four months, landing Luna 9 on February 3, 1966. Luna 9 was the 12th attempt at a soft landing by the Soviets. The US's Surveyor 1 landed on June 2, 1966. At least the US could claim to have been successful on its first landing attempt.

The mid-1960's vintage tie tack depicted above represents the Surveyor lander. The image below is of a Surveyor engineering test article. I took this picture in the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries Building (first home of the Air and Space Museum) in July 1971.

Looking back on this some 38 years later, I can remember how exciting it was to have a relatively "new" spacecraft (less than 5 years old) so close at hand! This same Surveyor now hangs from the ceiling in the National Air and Space Museum, barely noticeable among all the other artifacts.