The Little Spacecraft that Could

On the same day that giant Saturn 5 made its triumphant and tumultuous flight, little Surveyor 6, practically un heralded, settled to a gentle landing on the moon. But last week, after faultlessly running through the familiar Surveyor photography and chemical analysis chores, the ungainly-looking craft made everyone sit up and take notice.

On a signal from earth it fired its three vernier engines, rose ten feet from the surface and then landed again, eight feet from its original site. It was the first rocket-powered takeoff from the face of the moon.

The 6 1/2-second flight was the latest in an almost monotonous string of accomplishments compiled by the U.S.

Surveyor program, which now has successfully soft-landed four out of the six spacecraft sent moonward. This remarkable average--as improbable as a pitcher tossing four no-hit games in six starts--is perhaps the greatest technological feat in the first decade of the space age. Russian space scientists have parachuted an instrument package onto Venus, but have yet to develop the approach radar and rocketry system that can set an unmanned spacecraft down on the airless moons as gently as a helicopter touches down on a landing strip.

Loosened Purse Strings. From Surveyor's success has come man's first detailed knowledge of the consistency and chemical makeup of lunar soil, data and pictures that will influence the choice of the first astronaut landing site, and confirmation that the soft-landing system of the Apollo lunar module--similar to Surveyor's--is well conceived and workable.

Before it became a space-age swan, however, Surveyor had a long history as an ugly duckling. The seven-space craft program, originally expected to cost about $50 million and scheduled to begin shooting for the moon in August 1963, will eventually cost $350 million, and did not get off the ground until May 1966. Outraged by delays and rising costs, a congressional subcommittee in 1965 called Surveyor "one of the least orderly and most poorly executed of NASA projects."

Stung by congressional criticism and aware that everyone had sadly underestimated the complexity of a soft lander, NASA, Hughes Aircraft (which designed and built Surveyor) and Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which directed the project, provided technical advice, and eventually controlled the flights) moved to rescue the floundering program. Increasingly certain that Surveyor's findings were a necessary preliminary to an Apollo lunar landing, NASA loosened the purse strings, enabling JPL to increase its Surveyor personnel from fewer than 100 to 500, Hughes from 2,000 to 2,700.

Success Incentive. Under a newly-appointed triumvirate consisting of JPL's Surveyor Project Manager Robert Parks, Deputy Manager Howard Haglund and Hughes's Program Manager Robert Roderick, JPL-Hughes staffs were imbued with an "I think I can, I think I can" philosophy. To increase efficiency and desire at Hughes, NASA substituted an incentive contract for the old cost-pius-a-fixed-fee contract providing substantial financial gains only for successful missions.

The remedies worked. Knowing that glitches were bound to occur in the 83,000 different Surveyor components (34,000 in the Doppler and descent radar alone), scientists considered the first four craft as "engineering models," and would have been delighted if only one of them had made a successful soft landing. Thus no one was more surprised than the JPL and Hughes crews when the first Surveyor not only made a perfect landing and transmitted back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface but also proved so durable that it came back to life after each of two lunar nights, having survived temperatures as low as -250DEGF.

The subsequent success of Surveyors 3, 5 and 6 enabled scientists to complete their planned surveys of possible astronaut landing sites and left Surveyor 7--scheduled to be launched early in 1968--for use in a completely scientific mission. Scientists are currently considering landing it in a highland basin, where it could photograph and analyze high-altitude features not yet investigated by U.S. or Russian landers.

Although NASA has ordered no additional Surveyors, Hughes scientists believe that the reliable little craft would be ideal for further lunar exploring--even for a trip to Mars. Properly modified, they say, Surveyor could land gently on Mars and return pictures and data for only 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of the planned Voyager spacecraft.

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