Surveyor 3 soft-lands on Moon

Pasadena, California: Surveyor 3, breaking on tongues of fire, made the United States’ second softlanding on the moon today to scout astronaut landing sites with a television camera and a tiny shovel to scoop soil.

The spidery spacecraft planted its three legs on the dry Ocean of Storms at 5.34 am (IST) after a 65-hour, 217,000-mile (349-227 km) flight from Cape Kennedy, then radioed a technical “all well”.

Its camera was to begin returning pictures soon after landing. The little shovel was to begin soil analysis at midnight today or later.

In final minutes Surveyor spun in space to align its feet with flight path, then its main retro rocket braked it from 6,000 miles (9,656 km) per hour to 250 (402 km). Next three small guidance rockets slowed it to about 3 miles per hour (4.8 km) — and it fell the last few feet.

Surveyor 3 thus apparently duplicated the success of the pioneering Surveyor 1, which behaved perfectly last June in landing gently and returning thousands of pictures.

Huge cheer resounded in the auditorium at the jet propulsion laboratory, which controls the flight, as word of the touchdown came over a loudspeaker.

Surveyor 3 is the most sophisticated device the United States has sent to the moon and scientists banked on teamwork between its shovel and camera to return the most detailed information yet on the strength and texture of the lunar surface.