Surveyor Program

[Andy_Small]

I have a couple questions about the Surveyor Program.

Was there a curise stage attached to the spacecraft?  I've read where there were 3 rocket engines that fired at about 3.5m above the lunar surface.  I would thing there there would have to be a burn to get them onto the moon from a cruise stage.  There doesent look to be enough fuel onboard to do all the things that would have to be done to get to the surface.

I've looked around and can't find anything.

Thanks

[Rusty_Barton]

These NASA reports have the info you are looking for.

Surveyor Lander Mission and Capabilities
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19640019055_1964019055.pdf

Surveyor Automated Landing Missions
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690075314_1969075314.pdf


Surveyor 1 Mission Report
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660026658_1966026658.pdf



The Surveyor separated from the Centaur after being placed on a trans-lunar trajectory.
Surveyor had three main, liquid fueled, vernier engines that were also used for course corrections and the final landing maneuver. In addition it had a large, spherical, solid fuel rocket motor, nestled within its frame, that slowed the Surveyor for the landing maneuver. It fired at 60 miles altitude when the Surveyor was going 6,100 mph. It burned out before landing, at 25,000 ft, after it had slowed the Surveyor to 240 mph. At that point, the burnt out solid motor was ejected and the verniers took the Surveyor the rest of the way to the lunar surface.

[Andy_Small]

were the main engines hypergol?

[Rusty_Barton]

Andy_Small - 4/10/2007  11:50 AM

were the main engines hypergol?

Yes.

[meiza]

The Surveyor program is interesting from the Lunar X-Prize competition point of view.

[Andy_Small]

That's a good point.  It would be a good baseline for a team to use as a design.  Since the requirements are alot like what Surveyor did.  The diffrence would be the rover aspect.

[rsp1202]

Check me; this is from memory: Once landed, Surveyor's verniers were able to provide enough thrust to lift and hop the craft X number of feet away from its original landing site. It performed this maneuver during at least one mission.

[wingod]

rsp1202 - 5/10/2007  10:36 AM

Check me; this is from memory: Once landed, Surveyor's verniers were able to provide enough thrust to lift and hop the craft X number of feet away from its original landing site. It performed this maneuver during at least one mission.

Yep

[Rusty_Barton]

During the Surveyor 3 landing, the verniers did not turn off just above the surface as intended. They cutoff after landing, causing the Surveyor 3 to hop several times before finally coming to rest. The Surveyor 6 fired its vernier engines, after being on the surface for some time and intentionally took off and flew across the surface several feet before coming to rest again.

[Jim]

Andy_Small - 5/10/2007  10:36 AM

That's a good point.  It would be a good baseline for a team to use as a design.  Since the requirements are alot like what Surveyor did.  The diffrence would be the rover aspect.

Not really, there were versions of the surveyor with tracks instead of pads

[Andy_Small]

wow I didn't know that.  The only ones I've seen where with the pads.

[Rusty_Barton]

All of the seven flight model Surveyors had landing pads. There were designs for versions with tracks, but they never flew.

[Raoul]

Here are panoramics from the Surveyors:

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000856

[rsp1202]

As a follow-on to your post (thanks, by the way), see:
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521819305
Looks to be very interesting.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

[Blackstar]

If we're reviving this thread, it should probably include a link to the JPL documentary that addresses Surveyor, which is where Scott Manly got most of his video from:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/who-we-are/documentary-series-jpl-and-the-space-age

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/who-we-are/documentary-series-jpl-and-the-space-age/episode-3-destination-moon

It's mostly about Ranger, but does discuss Surveyor.


Addendum: I don't think he got all of his video from that JPL documentary, but a lot of it is from there. And I noticed no acknowledgement of that. He doesn't list his sources. When you use the work done by somebody else, you should at least indicate that.

[laszlo]

2 things really struck me in that video - the lovely wide legs of the spacecraft and the guy smoking a pipe in the control room. Today we've reversed both to the detriment of the spacecraft and to the benefit of the controllers and electronics in the control room. Can you imagine having to maintain vacuum tube equipment coated with baked-on smoke residue?

The mention of the analogue feedback loops from the radar to the gyros to control the spacecraft trajectory should also help with the Apollo Hoax conspiracy crowd and their claims that 1960's computers were too wimpy to allow a moon landing (how about no onboard computer?), except I doubt that any of them would understand CW radar and PID loops and analogue electronics. But it does demonstrate that good tech existed back when TV was wireless and phones were cabled and apples kept the doctor away.

[eric z]

 There is a guy running for Govenor now who thinks the Moon landing was a hoax, among other things.. . Maybe Chris could give him a gift subscription - I would chip in for that.

[Blackstar]

should also help with the Apollo Hoax conspiracy crowd

There is nothing that will actually convince them. There's an old saying that you cannot use logic to get a person out of a position that logic did not get them into in the first place.

[Blackstar]

But it does demonstrate that good tech existed back when TV was wireless and phones were cabled and apples kept the doctor away.

There's a comment that Manly makes about "primitive computers" that bugs me. They were not "primitive" at that time. They were advanced at that time. Forty years from now, somebody is going to make a documentary about the "primitive computers" we had in 2024. Do we think our computers now are primitive? It's a distorted way of looking at history.

[laszlo]

But it does demonstrate that good tech existed back when TV was wireless and phones were cabled and apples kept the doctor away.

There's a comment that Manly makes about "primitive computers" that bugs me. They were not "primitive" at that time. They were advanced at that time. Forty years from now, somebody is going to make a documentary about the "primitive computers" we had in 2024. Do we think our computers now are primitive? It's a distorted way of looking at history.

Amen, brother! I kept having to point out to the "kids" at work that we old fossils that don't understand tech invented and built the internet and wireless networks and that we did it without Google, Wikipedia or cell phones.

[Emmettvonbrown]

should also help with the Apollo Hoax conspiracy crowd

There is nothing that will actually convince them. There's an old saying that you cannot use logic to get a person out of a position that logic did not get them into in the first place.

Lipstick on a pig...

[Blackstar]

Amen, brother! I kept having to point out to the "kids" at work that we old fossils that don't understand tech invented and built the internet and wireless networks and that we did it without Google, Wikipedia or cell phones.

JPL's John Casani had a great quote in the Voyager documentary a number of years ago where he asked what's wrong with 1970s technology? He's 1930s technology and he's pretty capable. It's a great way of pointing out that it's not the specific technology that made something possible, it's the people that made the technology possible.

[Proponent]

Though Ranger was initiated as a scientific program, it was ultimately redirected principally to supporting Apollo. Surveyor, I believe, was Apollo-focused from the get go, and Lunar Orbiter certainly was. But, ultimately, how much impact did these programs have on Apollo?

Am I right in thinking that Ranger ultimately had essentially no influence on Apollo? By this I mean that no changes in design, procedures or landing sites resulted from Ranger photography. I'm not at all suggesting that Ranger was not worthwhile. It could, for example, have revealed a lunar surface so rocky that the LM would have required redesign.

Ditto for Surveyor. Was its value to Apollo not mostly in confirming the assumption that the lunar surface was reasonably smooth and capable of bearing substantial loads?

Lunar Orbiter photography was obviously heavily used in selecting landing sites. In its absence, though, is it possible that photography from  lunar-orbiting Apollo missions (like numbers 8 and 10) might have been sufficient to identify sites for early landings, with later site selection bootstrapping from photography on early missions? Again, I'm not suggesting this would have been a wise course of action, especially since the entire Lunar Orbiter program probably cost less than a since Apollo mission.

[Emmettvonbrown]

Well Apollo 13 & 14 had a big powerful camera seating on one of the astronaut couches: the Lunar Topographic Camera, a KA-74 aparently "borrowed" from the noses of Navy P-3B Orions.
No need for EVA to recover the film, unlike PanCam later. But much less powerful than both PanCam and Lunar Orbiter: still better ground resolution than the hand-held Hasseblads. Think it was 3 meters if the CSM flew really low. PanCam did 1 meter and so did Lunar Orbiter.

In theory Apollo 8 and beyond could have carried a LTC but procurement only started mid-1969.

[edzieba]

Well Apollo 13 & 14 had a big powerful camera seating on one of the astronaut couches: the Lunar Topographic Camera, a KA-74 aparently "borrowed" from the noses of Navy P-3B Orions.
No need for EVA to recover the film, unlike PanCam later. But much less powerful than both PanCam and Lunar Orbiter: still better ground resolution than the hand-held Hasseblads. Think it was 3 meters if the CSM flew really low. PanCam did 1 meter and so did Lunar Orbiter.

In theory Apollo 8 and beyond could have carried a LTC but procurement only started mid-1969.

Don't forget UPWARD/LMSS: initially sticking a GAMBIT into the Service Module, and later a on the nose rehoused in a GAMBIT³ shell (to allow film retrieval via EVA through the forward hatch), for mapping the Lunar surface.
In the end, Lunar Orbiter worked, so UPWARD/LMSS was not required and cancelled in 1967.

[Emmettvonbrown]

D'oh, silly me. UPWARD would have had less than 1 m ground resolution.

[edkyle99]

Though Ranger was initiated as a scientific program, it was ultimately redirected principally to supporting Apollo. Surveyor, I believe, was Apollo-focused from the get go, and Lunar Orbiter certainly was. But, ultimately, how much impact did these programs have on Apollo?

Am I right in thinking that Ranger ultimately had essentially no influence on Apollo? By this I mean that no changes in design, procedures or landing sites resulted from Ranger photography. I'm not at all suggesting that Ranger was not worthwhile. It could, for example, have revealed a lunar surface so rocky that the LM would have required redesign.

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/lunar_images/Ranger8toApollo11/

Note the creation of Lunar Ranger Charts, two of which covered the eventual Apollo 11 landing zone.  Ranger played a role in Apollo planning, but was eventually overshadowed by Lunar Orbiter.

 - Ed Kyle

[Proponent]

Thanks

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/lunar_images/Ranger8toApollo11/

Note the creation of Lunar Ranger Charts, two of which covered the eventual Apollo 11 landing zone.  Ranger played a role in Apollo planning, but was eventually overshadowed by Lunar Orbiter.

Thanks for that link. It's very interesting to see all of the Ranger shots in one place.

Ranger's field of view was very small. The widest Ranger 7 shots, for example, cover about 210 km, and the final high-resolution views less than 1 km. Hence the Apollo 11 zone must have been identified before Ranger flew.

[Proponent]

Ditto for Surveyor. Was its value to Apollo not mostly in confirming the assumption that the lunar surface was reasonably smooth and capable of bearing substantial loads?

Come to think of it, it was Luna 9, not Surveyor 1, that demonstrated the nature of the moon's surface.

[MattMason]

That's a good point.  It would be a good baseline for a team to use as a design.  Since the requirements are alot like what Surveyor did.  The diffrence would be the rover aspect.

As you might have seen in one of those papers, two rover designs were planned.
Neither materialized due to weight and lander development delays.
But one year, a decade later or so, an old Surveyor rover test model was dusted off at JPL. It became the granddad, after a fashion, of the Mars rovers. An article I wrote for my Facebook page.

https://spaceflightblunders.wordpress.com/2021/07/22/surveyors-cancelled-lunar-rover/

[Blackstar]

There's also a separate thread devoted to the Surveyor rover:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54383.0

I am certain that there is more that could be written about the rovers. Across the Airless Wilds delved into the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle:

https://www.amazon.com/Across-Airless-Wilds-Triumph-Landings/dp/0062986538

I suspect that there were other late 1960s studies of Surveyor science rovers that just never saw the light of day. When it was clear that the Apollo and lunar budgets were going down, I could see JPL and Hughes deciding that there was no point in continuing to pitch more lunar rovers. But as my Space Review article noted, there are indications that some other concepts were proposed, we just don't have them. Maybe buried in JPL's archives, which are for the most part not accessible to mere mortals.

[LittleBird]

 I suspect that there were other late 1960s studies of Surveyor science rovers that just never saw the light of day. When it was clear that the Apollo and lunar budgets were going down, I could see JPL and Hughes deciding that there was no point in continuing to pitch more lunar rovers. But as my Space Review article noted, there are indications that some other concepts were proposed, we just don't have them. Maybe buried in JPL's archives, which are for the most part not accessible to mere mortals.

It's also worth reminding ourselves that Hughes actually staffed Intelsat IV,SDS and apparently JUMPSEAT from among its Surveyor-trained engineers, as per the testimony of Tony Iorillo quoted here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4096/1

“In 1967 and 1968, even before TACSAT was launched, we used the TACSAT win as our relevant related experience” to win the classified [JUMPSEAT]  satellite contract, which Hughes designated the HS-318, and that for Intelsat IV, which used the HS-312 variant, Iorillo explained. 

[snip]

“With a large satellite configuration in hand, we beat TRW, and others, for the HS-318 and Intelsat IV contracts. These wins came just in time to prevent having to lay off the Surveyor and Intelsat II teams whose programs were ending. Even TACSAT was to end in a year. Thanks to Mr. Hyland’s foresight and faith, the bulk of these people were carried for many months entirely on company funding,” Iorillo noted.

[snip]

Iorillo also provided a bit more detail on the JUMPSEAT satellite they had to develop. “The ‘green’ program was much more demanding. It was our first entry into the operational world of satellite reconnaissance. And it was not a geostationary orbit mission. The satellite was a multi-mission vehicle carrying an electro-optical precision pointed payload and a very wide band ELINT [electronic intelligence] payload with large steerable receive and downlink antennas. We also designed and built the elaborate ground data processing segments for both payloads along with the satellite command and control station. The Surveyor guys were perfect for the job.”

In principle they could have been transferred back but I suspect Hughes had already decided that comsats and spy sats were their best and most stable target market, and suited the corporate USP best.

[Blackstar]

I have a new, short, article in the works on the early early days of Surveyor (1960-1961). Adds some interesting new information to the story. Alas, it also provides some questions that I can't really answer. Somebody proposed X, but why was it rejected? And did anybody else propose doing X too? Also provides a little bit of information on what companies bid on the lander contract, but again it is limited.

I don't know where there may be any remaining files on Surveyor. I suspect that JPL has some, but their archives are not available to anybody outside the organization. NASA sponsored books on Lunar Orbiter and Ranger, but not Surveyor. So we don't know a lot about the decision making, like what companies bid and why Hughes won the contract. The existing NASA small monograph on Surveyor mentions substantial turmoil at Hughes, with reorganizations happening every six months or so, but doesn't go into how NASA addressed these problems. As an aside: management of Ranger after a series of initial failures got a lot of attention, so not having that info for Surveyor is disappointing.

Will publish in January. Then will probably do a follow-up article a few weeks later.

[Athelstane]

I have a new, short, article in the works on the early early days of Surveyor. Adds some interesting new information to the story. Alas, it also provides some questions that I can't really answer. Somebody proposed X, but why was it rejected? And did anybody else propose doing X too? Also provides a little bit of information on what companies bid on the lander contract, but again it is limited.

I don't know where there may be any remaining files on Surveyor. I suspect that JPL has some, but their archives are not available to anybody outside the organization. NASA sponsored books on Lunar Orbiter and Ranger, but not Surveyor. So we don't know a lot about the decision making, like what companies bid and why Hughes won the contract. The existing NASA small monograph on Surveyor mentions substantial turmoil at Hughes, with reorganizations happening every six months or so, but doesn't go into how NASA addressed these problems. As an aside: management of Ranger after a series of initial failures got a lot of attention, so not having that info for Surveyor is disappointing.

Will publish in January. Then will probably do a follow-up article a few weeks later.

No chance of JPL opening up the archives (or rather, that part of the archives) to a space historian like you?

[Blackstar]

I haven't tried in a long time. Last time I inquired about it, I think I was told that essentially you have to be under contract to JPL to write a history in order to see the archives. So they're not going to open them to people who are just interested, even if they have a track record. I think that is a Caltech rule, not a JPL rule. Maybe a NASA historian could talk their way in, but I don't know. Also, I have lots of other stuff that occupies my brain/time (as I've noted before, my day job gets in the way of my hobby). I published about 20 articles this past year, and many of them were the result of doing research out at Vandenberg. That's where I got all those neat launch site photos. Alas, it's not easy getting to Vandenberg, so those trips require a lot more effort and time.

For awhile the JPL historian was working on a Surveyor history. But that project got canceled before it really got started.

[Blackstar]

I will add that the follow-up article will probably touch on the Surveyor rover. If you read my big Surveyor article from a few years ago (referenced in a separate thread that really could be merged with this one), the rover was much more of a site inspection vehicle than a scientific vehicle. Two prototypes were built. I have a little more information on that, as well as other lunar rover concepts.

[LittleBird]

I haven't tried in a long time. Last time I inquired about it, I think I was told that essentially you have to be under contract to JPL to write a history in order to see the archives. So they're not going to open them to people who are just interested, even if they have a track record. I think that is a Caltech rule, not a JPL rule. Maybe a NASA historian could talk their way in, but I don't know. Also, I have lots of other stuff that occupies my brain/time (as I've noted before, my day job gets in the way of my hobby). I published about 20 articles this past year, and many of them were the result of doing research out at Vandenberg. That's where I got all those neat launch site photos. Alas, it's not easy getting to Vandenberg, so those trips require a lot more effort and time.

For awhile the JPL historian was working on a Surveyor history. But that project got canceled before it really got started.

Mght be worth seeing if anything found its way to the Huntington library. Although Caltech-affiliated this does seem to allow relatively open access and does have some very interesting aerospace material.

 As someone here noted a while ago, Wheelon’s papers are there, for example. It’s not inconceivable that some  of the Hughes part of the Surveyor story is there.


There are also surviving Hughes retirees, and their site is occasionally updated [Edit: See https://hughesscgheritage.wordpress.com/?s=surveyor].

[Edit: I see that  there's more than one Hughes retiree group-see this list https://special.library.unlv.edu/sites/default/files/finding-aids/MS-01146.pdf  at University of Nevada Las Vegas and specifically the Surveyor newsletters from late in the programme. I know you may not want to pursue these Blackstar but others might. ]

[2nd Edit: Note also that the links above from Hughes SCG Heritage site are not the only Surveyor ones there, there is for example this interesting one from the late Jack Fisher on the legacy of the programme for Hughes:

https://hughesscgheritage.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/surveyor-legacy-and-lessons-learned-jack-fisher/

which ends

The Hughes legacy resulting from Surveyor is multi-faceted. First capturing the project was perhaps unexpected, but proved that Hughes could compete technically in the space arena and hold its own against some pretty stiff competition. The spacecraft design that soft-landed on the moon was not significantly changed from the proposal design. Another legacy was the cadre of engineers and managers that learned how to handle complex space missions and spacecraft. A number of future Hughes projects in the NASA, commercial and national security arenas owe their success to those folks who learned how on Surveyor. Also the company proved after a more than difficult development that it was ready to play in the big leagues of space systems development and proceeded to do just that over the next several decades.

The Surveyor bottom line is that after all the travail of the development phase the very successful Surveyor missions provided a firm foundation of the upcoming Apollo missions and began the scientific exploration of the lunar surface. Perhaps the greatest legacy of Surveyor was the creation of the Space and Communications Group in 1970. With this reorganization all the elements required for successful space system engineering and management, the project offices and the design organizations, were included in one organization. And if you would like to see Surveyor you can travel to Washington DC and visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum—it’s there in the Lunar Exploration gallery along with Ranger and Lunar Orbiter.

]

[Blackstar]

I appreciate the tips, but I am more interested in a higher return source than memoirs, if such exists--i.e. a collection of primary source documents rather than what people might remember. It takes a lot of time, effort and money for me to do research trips. If I'm going to dig for Surveyor information, I want to dig where I'm going to strike gold rather than randomly wander the wastelands like Yukon Cornelius.

The only reason I'm revisiting Surveyor now is that a friend of mine tipped me off to some interesting information that has been overlooked. It's some interesting stuff, and it just dropped in my lap. Some of it connects with the story of MOLAB and the Lunar Roving Vehicle, so I am also going to touch on that.

[Blackstar]

Confession: I'm being a bit obtuse in my replies here because I don't want to reveal much of what I have in the article before I publish it. I'm not going to revolutionize the Surveyor story or anything, but it's neat info and I want to have it appear in the article first.

One thing that is becoming apparent as I revisit Surveyor is just how big a gap there was between the promise and what actually got delivered. I know that is common for all space programs, but I get the impression that the people working on Surveyor initially expected that this would be the lunar surface exploration program for the decade and then of course Apollo became the lunar exploration program. But there may have still been some people who understandably thought that maybe, just maybe Surveyor could then contribute to future lunar surface exploration after Apollo.

And my most recent research highlights that issue during the Surveyor program itself. There were people who were proposing "hey, it can also do this cool thing!" And they submitted their proposal into a void. As Surveyor was being scaled back, both in what it would do scientifically, and because it was in this war with the launch vehicle capability, any suggestions for new payloads were almost pointless. When they were struggling to get the mass down on Surveyor (and the performance up for Centaur), program managers did not need somebody coming along with other neat new Surveyor ideas.

My 2-part article also goes into the Surveyor rover, and that leads me again to think that maybe I should propose to the mods that this thread and the rover thread be merged (although I would not want all the attachments to disappear if that happened):

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54383.0;all

[LittleBird]

Confession: I'm being a bit obtuse in my replies here because I don't want to reveal much of what I have in the article before I publish it. I'm not going to revolutionize the Surveyor story or anything, but it's neat info and I want to have it appear in the article first.

One thing that is becoming apparent as I revisit Surveyor is just how big a gap there was between the promise and what actually got delivered. I know that is common for all space programs, but I get the impression that the people working on Surveyor initially expected that this would be the lunar surface exploration program for the decade and then of course Apollo became the lunar exploration program. But there may have still been some people who understandably thought that maybe, just maybe Surveyor could then contribute to future lunar surface exploration after Apollo.

And my most recent research highlights that issue during the Surveyor program itself. There were people who were proposing "hey, it can also do this cool thing!" And they submitted their proposal into a void. As Surveyor was being scaled back, both in what it would do scientifically, and because it was in this war with the launch vehicle capability, any suggestions for new payloads were almost pointless. When they were struggling to get the mass down on Surveyor (and the performance up for Centaur), program managers did not need somebody coming along with other neat new Surveyor ideas.

My 2-part article also goes into the Surveyor rover, and that leads me again to think that maybe I should propose to the mods that this thread and the rover thread be merged (although I would not want all the attachments to disappear if that happened):

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54383.0;all

[Edit: I realise that 1967-68 is later on than the period that Blackstar is talking about, and that Hughes' monopoly on comsats wasn't totally solid either, but I think the interaction between the needs of NASA and JPL and the needs of corporate strategy is an interesting issue that isn't often looked at.]

As I noted above, Tony Iorillo (and I think some others) have said that the Surveyor alumni were key members of Hughes' most ambitious projects in the late 60s and early 70s-some well known like Intelsat IV, some still partially (USAF/NRO SDS) or completely (NRO JUMPSEAT) shrouded in  secrecy.

 I wonder to what extent the Hughes side would ever have remained  motivated to propose extensions to a programme which was far more vulnerable to the vagaries of budgets than the commercial or national security realms ? Iorillo recalled https://hughesscgheritage.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/tacsat-preview-tony-iorillo/  in 2020 just how financially tenous the situation was in early '68:

In 1967 and 1968, even before TACSAT was launched, we used the TACSAT win as our relevant related experience.


With a large satellite configuration in hand, we beat TRW, and others, for the HS-318 and Intelsat IV contracts.  These wins came just in time to prevent having to lay off the Surveyor and Intelsat II teams whose programs were ending. Even TACSAT was to end in a year.  Thanks to Mr, Hyland’s foresight and faith, the bulk of these people were carried for many months entirely on company funding
   
Bob Roney became our new Space Division manager shortly before the wins were announced in 1968.  At an all hands meeting, the day he took over, Bob informed us that our division had but a 60-day backlog. Dick Brandes and I still recall the tension felt by all in the room.

and how important the Surveyor alumni were:

The “green” program   was much more demanding.  It was our first entry into the operational world of satellite reconnaissance.  And it was not a geostationary orbit mission.  The satellite was a multi-mission vehicle carrying an electro-optical precision pointed payload and a very wide band ELINT payload with large steerable receive and downlink antennas.  We also designed and built the elaborate ground data processing segments for both payloads along with the satellite command and control station. The Surveyor guys were perfect for the job

One thing is clear though, the lure of working on a moon mission was considerable-see this Hughes ad from AW&ST, 24th Sep 1962:

 

[Blackstar]

I'm going to continue being vague for a few more days, but I expect the first part of my article to appear next week in TSR. I should have some nice-quality images by this evening that I can put in the article.

The second part is about the Surveyor rover and how it contributed to later Apollo rover and Mars rover designs. I've written about that and others have done so as well (the book on the Apollo LRV that came out a few years ago covered this well). That's not going to be anything new on my part. However, what is interesting about that is the through-line, how a company did a bunch of research for something that did not fly, but made important contributions to things that ultimately did fly.

The first part opens up the Surveyor story a bit more. There is what is publicly known about Surveyor, but this now expands upon it and shows that people were trying to get it to do some more things. That leads me to believe that there's still more to this story than is public. If some of this information was hiding in plain sight, then it is possible that there's even more if somebody was willing to dig.

I'm a bit jazzed about that at the moment because The Space Review reviews a book about lunar programs that I find aggravating because apparently the author did no new research, just regurgitated what is already public. The information that I found about early Surveyor demonstrates that there is almost always new material to find if you put in the legwork. If you are writing about a subject, there's no excuse for being lazy.

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4921/1

Surveyor sample return: the mission that never was
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, January 20, 2025

Early on the morning of January 15, a rocket lifted off from Florida carrying two small lunar landers. A NASA-sponsored mission called Blue Ghost 1 is scheduled to land on the Moon a month and a half from now as the United States seeks to make robotic Moon landings a routine occurrence. The last time that happened was in the mid-1960s with the Surveyor program. Surveyor started out as an ambitious project that included a lander, orbiter, a rover, and possibly even a sample return mission. That sample return proposal has been overlooked in histories of early American space exploration.
Surveyor’s ambitions

Between May 1966 and January 1968, the United States launched seven Surveyor missions to the Moon and successfully landed five of them. Surveyor was built to provide data on lunar conditions to be used for Apollo landing missions. But Surveyor was originally planned to be the premiere NASA lunar science program of the 1960s, with up to 17 missions. Before John F. Kennedy in May 1961 redirected Apollo from a program that might eventually send astronauts around the Moon to a program to land them on the Moon by a deadline, NASA planned for many robotic lunar landers, starting with a project called Prospector that was canceled and reborn as Surveyor. Surveyor was dramatically de-scoped by the mid-1960s, both in goals and numbers. (See “Dark side of the Moon: the lost Surveyor missions,” The Space Review, December 20, 2021.) But before this happened, NASA allowed its scientists and contractors to think big.

[copernicus]

Excellent article on the Surveyor sample return mission.  Perhaps NASA might want to request such a mission during the next round of commercial lunar proposals.

  In fact, a series of sample-return missions would be helpful, especially if paired with rock-collecting rovers.
Perhaps a company could clone, more or less, the Surveyor lander design.  After all, it is well proven! 

[Hobbes-22]

Well-proven but very limited. It has no terrain recognition or avoidance, these things landed blind. The main landing engine is a solid motor, so if you add terrain recognition, you may have to replace the motor as well with a liquid-fueled rocket so you can adjust thrust and have a variable-length burn. All you'd be left with is the frame.

[Blackstar]

Well-proven but very limited. It has no terrain recognition or avoidance, these things landed blind. The main landing engine is a solid motor, so if you add terrain recognition, you may have to replace the motor as well with a liquid-fueled rocket so you can adjust thrust and have a variable-length burn. All you'd be left with is the frame.

Yes, as I noted, Surveyor had a dry mass of approximately 300 kilograms, making it a lightweight compared to Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 lander, which masses 490 kilograms. I don't know anything about BG, but I assume that much greater mass also provides much greater payload capability.

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4931/1

Of Firebirds and lunar rovers
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, February 3, 2025

In the mid-1960s, NASA landed five Surveyor spacecraft on the Moon. They took photos and tested the soil characteristics of their landing sites, providing data for future Apollo landings, including Apollo 12, which set down very close to Surveyor 3. But NASA had dramatically scaled back the Surveyor program both in the concept stage and later while it was underway. Instead of 17 planned missions, the agency only flew seven and succeeded with five. Surveyor also never carried drilling equipment, as scientists wanted, or a small rover, despite rover prototypes that were developed and underwent limited testing. Other than the flown Surveyor missions, much less is known about the program’s development and planning. But there are still untapped sources of information about the rover program and its connection to other NASA astronaut rover projects of the 1960s, including the role the American automotive industry played in the space program.

[Blackstar]

The crazier rover designs were when Norman James was told to go wild and come up with whatever ideas he had for a large rover for astronauts. The big tracked vehicle doesn't make much sense. But you can see how they refined the ideas down to the MOLAB concept. GM then realized that they were never going to get to build MOLAB and started looking at rovers that could fly on Apollo.

[catdlr]

Surveyor 2 to 7 Moon Landers - Atlas-Centaur, Pictures, Launch, Lunar Lander Mission, Audio, HD

Nov 6, 2025  #surveyor #moon #nasa
Documentary about the Surveyor 2 to 7 moon landers, based on existing historical footage and narration. Each mission is described in detail. Multiple camera angles of the launches are shown, accompanied by good-quality archive scans of surface photos. When no audio existed, ambient sounds were added.

_______________________________________________________
CHAPTERS

00:00 Surveyor 2
0:51 SD2 launch
03:44 Surveyor 3
07:35 Surveyor 4
07:57 Surveyor 5
09:07 SD5 launch
12:23 Surveyor 6
12:50 SD6 launch
15:07 Surveyor 7
16:37 SD7 launch
19:35 Surveyor Program Results