Surveyor 1

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Surveyor 1

Surveyor model on Earth
Mission type	Lunar lander
Operator	NASA
COSPAR ID	1966-045A
SATCAT no.	02185
Mission duration	7 months, 8 days (launch to last contact)
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer	Hughes Aircraft
Launch mass	995.2 kilograms (2,194 lb)[1]
Landing mass	292 kilograms (644 lb)
Start of mission
Launch date	May 30, 1966, 14:41:01 (1966-05-30UTC14:41:01Z) UTC
Rocket	Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D AC-10
Launch site	Cape Canaveral LC-36A
End of mission
Last contact	7 January 1967 (1967-01-08)
Lunar lander
Landing date	June 2, 1966, 06:17:36 UTC[2]
Landing site	2°28′26″S 43°20′20″W / 2.474°S 43.339°W / -2.474; -43.339[2]
Surveyor ← None Surveyor 2 →

Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the uncrewed Surveyor program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, United States). This lunar soft-lander gathered data about the lunar surface that would be needed for the crewed Apollo Moon landings that began in 1969. The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 on the Ocean of Storms was the first by an American space probe on any extraterrestrial body,^[3] occurring on the first attempt and just four months after the first soft Moon landing by the Soviet Union's Luna 9 probe.

Surveyor 1 was launched May 30, 1966, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966. Surveyor 1 transmitted 11,237 still photos of the lunar surface to the Earth by using a television camera and a sophisticated radio-telemetry system.

The Surveyor program was managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Los Angeles County, California, and the Surveyor space probe was built by the Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California.