56 years ago today, NASA’s Surveyor 6 lunar lander made history by conducting the first liftoff from the Moon’s surface as it used its engines to briefly liftoff from the Moon’s surface to a height of 12 feet (4 meters), followed by it moving 8 feet (2.5 meters) before landing again and continued to operate as planned until it transmitted its last contact on December 14, 1967.
Launched on November 7, 1967, the goal of Surveyor 6 was to further test space technology and successfully performed a soft landing on the Moon on November 10, 1967. The instruments it carried were a television camera which transmitted approximately 30,000 images back to Earth during its 37-day mission, and the alpha-scattering surface analyzer which was designed to investigate the chemical composition of the lunar regolith, which is the top layer of the lunar surface.
Surveyor 6 was the sixth mission in NASA’s uncrewed Surveyor program, and the fourth mission to successfully perform a soft landing on the lunar surface. Surveyor 6 landed near the crash site of Surveyor 4, which experienced a malfunction approximately two and a half minutes before touchdown in July 1967 and crashed into the lunar surface. The purpose of the Surveyor program was to test the lunar surface to landing stability while continuing to test and develop space technology that could be used on future missions to the Moon and was instrumental in testing a variety of space technologies leading up to the crewed Apollo missions, which occurred in 1969.
We salute Surveyor 6 and the contributions it made to the space program, specifically the towards advancing space technology and research conducted on the lunar surface.
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: NASA, NASA (1), Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA (2)
Featured Image: Photograph of NASA's Surveyor 3 lander, which was similar in design to Surveyor 6, taken by Apollo 12 astronauts. (Credit: NASA)
