9-Jan-2012 - Jan 9, 1968 | NASA's Surveyor 7 Probe Makes Soft Landing on Moon

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On Jan. 9, 1968, the Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon. It was the final mission of the Surveyor program, a series of unmanned explorations Authentic nfl jerseys of the lunar surface.The New York Times wrote that the 10-foot high, 638-pound probe had "had beaten unfavorable odds against landing undamaged on terrain of unknown ruggedness."There were seven Surveyor missions between 1966 and 1968, five of which landed safely on the moon. The primary purpose of the Surveyor program was to test the feasibility of soft, or controlled, landings on the moon and, in the words of the Times, provide "reconnaissance for a manned landing." The Surveyor probes conducted tests of properties of the moon's surface, and were equipped with cameras that provided tens of thousands of images. The Surveyor program indicated that a manned landing was possible–and it proved the moon's surface to be solid enough for an astronaut to walk on without nike nfl jerseys sinking. In July 1969, eighteen months after the final Surveyor probe, NASA put two men on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission.Connect to Today:In November 2011, almost 43 years after the Surveyor 7 lunar probe, NASA launched a one-ton rover named Curiosity toward Mars on a mission to search for organic compounds, which may determine "whether Mars might once have been hospitable for microbial life—or might even still football jerseys be conducive to life." The rover is scheduled to land in August 2012.What are your thoughts on the mission to Mars? In general, do you find the prospect of extraterrestrial life intriguing or disturbing? Why?Learn more about what happened in history on January 9»Learn more about Historic Headlines and our collaboration with findingDulcinea »

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