{"id":778,"date":"2012-07-14T14:47:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T14:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=778"},"modified":"2012-07-14T14:47:47","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T14:47:47","slug":"ill-fated-lunar-surveyor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/ill-fated-lunar-surveyor\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ill-Fated Lunar Surveyor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty-five years ago today — July 14, 1967 — an Atlas Centaur launched from Cape Canaveral carrying Surveyor 4.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Sinus Medii, planned landing site for Surveyor 4, imaged in 1994 by Clementine. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nSurveyor 4<\/a> was scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface on July 17th, but … <\/p>\n

After a flawless flight to the moon, radio signals from the spacecraft ceased during the terminal-descent phase … approximately 2.5 min before touchdown. Contact with the spacecraft was never reestablished, and the mission was unsuccessful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThe original landing target was 0.4 N, 1.33 W in Sinus Medii (“Central Bay”). Surveyor 4 may have exploded before impact, as this site notes<\/a> that “communications were abruptly lost 2 seconds prior to retrorocket cutoff.”<\/p>\n

So, like its sister ship Surveyor 2<\/a>, Surveyor 4 did not accomplish its mission. Good thing there were seven spacecraft in the series!<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty-five years ago today — July 14, 1967 — an Atlas Centaur launched from Cape Canaveral carrying Surveyor 4. (Sinus Medii, planned landing site for Surveyor 4, imaged in 1994 by Clementine. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.) Surveyor 4 was scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface on July \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,15,11],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-moon","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}