page_title: Surveyor program
section_title: Space Race competition
hierarchical_section_title: Surveyor program / Space Race competition
caption_attribution_description: English: Surveyor lander on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
context_page_description: The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing. The program was implemented by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to prepare for the Apollo program. JPL selected Hughes Aircraft to develop the spacecraft system. The total cost of the Surveyor program was officially $469 million.
  Five of the Surveyor craft successfully soft-landed on the Moon, including the first one. The other two failed: Surveyor 2 crashed at high velocity after a failed mid-course correction, and Surveyor 4 lost contact 2.5 minutes before its scheduled touch-down.
  All seven spacecraft are still on the Moon; none of the missions included returning them to Earth.
context_section_description: During the time of the Surveyor missions, the United States was actively involved in the Space Race with the Soviet Union. Thus, the Surveyor 1 landing in June 1966, only four months after the Soviet Luna 9 probe landed in February, was an indication the programs were at similar stages.
caption: Surveyor lander on display at the National Air And Space Museum
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