UMSF space history photo of the month Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Maybe we could make this a monthly item, in which we could look back at the history of Unmanned Space missions.
For January 2008 I've chosen an image showing the coverage of the Sun by early Pioneer 5-8 spacecraft.
Pioneer 5 to 8, or Pioneer V to VIII using the system of Roman numerals in vogue during the early 1960s for spacecraft designations, were directed towards the Sun along the earth's orbit to monitor solar activity. Pioneer V was launched on 11th March 1960 and provided the very first space weather report 4 to 8 hours before a solar storm hit the Earth.
Some of this Pioneer quartet, Pioneer 6-7-8 even provided updates on our Sun's activity during the early Apollo Moon landings in order to check the damaging potential of solar flares to affect the astronauts.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

This month's photo shows a mockup engineering model of the US Surveyor lunar lander spacecraft.
Surveyor 1 was the first of the series and made the first soft landing on 2nd June 1966 (if You considered the February 1966 landing of the Soviet Luna 9 a hard landing )
The Surveyor 1 had a mass of 995 kg at launch and about 295 kg at lunar landing. The 665 kg Thiokol retro-motor took most of the mass. After it ignited, the spacecraft used a radar altimeter Doppler velocity-sensing (RADVS) system to provide data for vehicle control once the solid motor had been ejected. Surveyor 1 dropped onto the surface just 15 km off target near the crater Flamsteed. The lander was photographed on the surface by Lunar Orbiter 3 in 1967.
Surveyor 3 landed in April 1967 and ws visited by the Apollo 12 in November 1969.
The 1040 kg Surveyor 7 was launched as a dedicated scientific mission, ending the series by soft landing on the Moon in January 1968. The 4 successful Surveyors ( 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 ) had satisfied Apollo requirements in the Moon's equatorial zone and the rest is history ...