Mission Summary
Surveyor 2 was the United States second attempt to set a spacecraft down gently on the Moon, and it ended in a crash when a single thruster refused to fire. Launched September 20, 1966, it was built, like its successful predecessor, to photograph the surface and test whether the ground could support a lander ahead of the Apollo missions.
The trouble came during a mid-course correction on the coast to the Moon. One of the spacecraft three vernier thrusters failed to ignite, throwing the craft into a spin. Controllers tried as many as 39 times to fire the stuck thruster, without success, and Surveyor 2 continued toward the Moon out of control.
The main retro-rocket fired on September 22, but the tumbling spacecraft lost radio contact about 30 seconds later, and Surveyor 2 crashed southeast of the Copernicus crater. The failure was a sobering setback between Surveyor 1 triumph and the string of successful landings that would soon follow.
Sources and notes can be found on the Sources page.
