1966-09-20 · 60 years ago

Surveyor 2 — launch

Date in UTC

Surveyor 2 was to be the second lunar lander in the uncrewed American Surveyor program to explore the Moon. After launch on September 20, 1966, a mid-course correction failure resulted in the spacecraft losing control. Contact was lost with the spacecraft at 9:35 UTC, September 22. On February 3, 1966, the Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. On May 30, Surveyor 1 launched, landing on Oceanus Procellarum on June 2. This craft also transmitted photographic data back to Earth. This spacecraft was the second of a series designed to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and to return lunar surface photography for determining characteristics of the lunar terrain for Apollo program lunar landing missions.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor_2. Related NASA reference: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/surveyor-2/. Description adapted from Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Category
Launches and Flight Tests
Type
Orbital launch
Subjects
Space transportation
Mission
Surveyor 2
Organization
NASA Lewis Research Center
Vehicle
Atlas Centaur D
Location
Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida
Country
US
Outcome
Successful

Context and qualifications

Launch code: DS. Source references: JPL-TR32-1086; TR-1022.

Sources and attribution

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