posted 06-26-2023 02:58 PM               

Space Cover 707: Surveyor Program

The Surveyor program was a NASA program to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. NASA launched seven Surveyor robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon from June 1966 through January 1968. The Surveyor landers were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body.

After launch each Surveyor spacecraft mission plan had the spacecraft traveling directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory — a trip of 63 to 65 hours — then ending with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing on the lunar surface.

The program was implemented by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to learn about lunar landings in preparation for the Apollo program. The original Surveyor program began in 1960. Hughes Aircraft was selected in 1961 to develop the Surveyor spacecraft system. The total cost of the Surveyor program was officially $469 million (1968). This would be roughly $1.1 billion in today’s dollars!

Five of the seven Surveyor craft successfully soft-landed on the Moon. Surveyor 2 crashed at high velocity after a failed mid-course correction, and Surveyor 4 lost contact with Earth about 2.5 minutes before its scheduled touch-down.

Some parts of Surveyor 3 were returned to Earth by the crew of Apollo 12, which landed near it in 1969. The camera from this craft is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. DC.

Launch covers are relatively easy to find for all the Surveyor missions as there were many cachet servicers in existence at this point in time. A launch cover by Bill Ronson of Orbit Cachets is pictured above which listed the results of all the Surveyor missions in the cachet.

The KSC post office created an official NASA cachet for the launch of only one mission – Surveyor C. Pre-launch the spacecraft were designated by letter and after launch designated by number thus Surveyor C became Surveyor 3 after launch. Interestingly, this was the mission visited by Apollo 12 crew moonwalk!

Lunar landing covers are harder to find with Orbit covers being one of the few servicers that also created landing covers for the successful landings. The Orbit Cover for the Surveyor 7 landing is also pictured above.

posted 06-27-2023 05:26 AM            

You say "Launch covers are relatively easy to find for all the Surveyor missions," yet I found it quite difficult to assemble the 'early' covers, and I'm still missing two of the launch covers from that part of the program.

I have in my collection:

• Surveyor program Centaur-A launch fail 8 May 62
  
• Surveyor premodel (AtlasCentaur-2) 27 Nov 63
  
• Surveyor program Centaur-C launch.F. 30 Jun 64
  
• SurveyorModel-1 (Centaur-4) 11 Dec 64
  
• Surveyor SD-1 Atlas-Centaur 2 Mar 65
  
• Surveyor SD-2 (Centaur-6) 11 Aug 65
  
• Surveyor 2 launch 20Sep66
  
• SurveyorModel-3 (Centaur-9) 26 Oct 66
  
• Surveyor 3
  
• Surveyor C blue NASA cachet
  
• Apollo 12 astronauts visit Surveyor 3
  
• Surveyor 4
  
• Surveyor 5
  
• Surveyor 6
  
• Surveyor 6 moon landing
  
• Surveyor 7

• Surveyor Model-2 (Centaur-8) 8Apr66
  
• Surveyor 1 launch 30 May 66