photo #7292317

8 Sep. 1967: On this day (Sep. 8th), 57 years ago, Surveyor 5 was launched. Shown here is an image of the spacecraft’s footpad resting in the lunar soil. The trench at right was formed by the footpad sliding during landing. Surveyor 5 landed on the Moon on 11 Sep. 1967 at 1.41 N, 23.18E in Mare Tranquillitatis (the Sea of Tranquility). Less than two years later the first crewed landing, Apollo 11, would land 25 km (15.5 miles) south-southwest of Surveyor 5 - theoretically within reach of the Lunar Roving Vehicle had there been an LRV on that mission. Surveyor 5 was the third spacecraft in the Surveyor series to achieve a successful lunar soft landing. The mission experienced a helium leak in the system that pressurized the liquid-fuel vernier engines that could have resulted in failure. An improvised landing sequence which started the retrorocket just 42 km above the Moon (about half the usual height) allowed the vernier engines to bring the craft down in 106 seconds from a height of only 1340 m (about 10% of the usual). This brought the craft down with a helium pressure on the edge of what would have shut the engines down from lack of pressure. The landing, however, was successful, and data was received for two weeks after the landing. A miniature chemical analysis lab using an alpha particle backscatter device was used to determine the lunar surface soil consisted of basaltic rock.