Surveyor: Lunar Exploration Program – The NASA Mission Reports
Edited and compiled by Robert Godwin; Apogee Books; Burlington, Ontario Canada; $17.95 (soft cover); 2010.
All too often, in our forward plunge into deep space, we forget the legacy projects of achievement in space exploration. That’s the case with NASA’s robotic lunar lander effort – Surveyor.
That program set the stage for the follow-on Apollo moonwalkers to comfortably – and safely – set foot on what Buzz Aldrin viewed as “magnificent desolation.”
A special nod of the space helmet goes to Apogee Books for compiling this historical look at Surveyor – a set of robotic craft that answered some key questions: Could a spacecraft safely land on the Moon and not be swallowed up by lunar dust? Could the extreme temperatures and surface radiation disable the hardware? Could an accurate trajectory be calculated? Were there places that were flat enough and debris-free to allow a safe landing?
Built by the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, Surveyor landers between 1966 and 1968 helped tackle these critical questions. The spacecraft series produced a wealth of lunar data, including the snapping of over 87,000 pictures from the lunar surface and were built by the Hughes Aircraft Corporation.
The reader will find a book containing loads of previously unavailable documentation. It is accompanied by a further 1,800 pages of material on an accompanying CDROM.
What I found as a nifty part of the book is an assessment of Surveyor 3 hardware brought back to Earth by visiting Apollo 12 astronauts in November 1969.
As editor Godwin explains: “Today NASA is once again steering its future toward lunar exploration. It is likely that something much like the hardy Surveyor robotic landers will again be sent out in advance to scout for the most profitable locations for human explorers, or perhaps even settlers.”
Also, you Google Lunar X Prize practitioners might find some good lessons learned from decades ago – and added incentive to push forward on privately-backed exploration of the Moon.
For more information, go to:
http://www.apogeespacebooks.com/Books/Surveyor.html
By Leonard David