The Surveyor series of spacecraft was designed to carry out soft landings on the Moon and provide data about its surface and possible atmosphere. These were the first US probes to soft-land on the Moon. Once landed they provided detailed pictures of the surface by means of a TV camera carried on each of the spacecraft. Later Surveyors carried an instrumented soil mechanics surface scoop. These were used to study the mechanical properties of lunar soil. Some of the spacecraft were also equipped to perform simple chemical analyses on lunar soil by means of alpha particle scattering. There were seven Surveyor launches starting in May, 1966, all launched by the Atlas-Centaur rocket. All but two successfully achieved program goals returning over 88,000 high-resolution photographs and invaluable detailed data on the nature and strength of the lunar surface. The Surveyors were designed and built by Hughes Aircraft Company, Aerospace Division. Harry H. Nelson was an engineer with Hughes for over twenty years and during his time there, he worked on the Surveyor Program.
