Surveyor Program Lunar Landers

The Surveyor program was a series of seven robotic spacecraft launched by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration between 1966 and 1968 to achieve controlled, soft landings on the lunar surface ahead of the crewed Apollo missions. Each Surveyor lander carried a television camera and, on several flights, a surface sampling scoop or alpha scattering instrument to characterize the mechanical and chemical properties of the regolith at its landing site. Five of the seven Surveyor missions reached the Moon intact, transmitting tens of thousands of images and demonstrating that spacecraft and future astronauts could land safely without sinking into the lunar dust, directly informing Apollo site selection and lander design.