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[NASA caption] Shadow on the Moon
With the evening Sun furnishing proper backlighting, the NASA’s Surveyor I spacecraft made this photo of his own shadow where it soft-landed on the surface of the Moon. Launched last May, Surveyor I made this picture at 2.55 p.m. EDT on June 13 with the Moon’s sunset less than 24 hours away. The 600-scan-line, wide-angle television photo was received at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

A great photograph showing the shadow of a manmade object on the surface of another world, taken at the end of the lunar day (a lunar day is equivalent to 14 Earth days).

“Alone on a desolate plain of the Moon’s Sea of Storms, Surveyor I stands quietly, its job well done, wrote Homer Newell, Associate Administrator, NASA. “Here is a picture of its own making. Surveyor casts a lengthening shadow as the long lunar day nears its end. Surface temperatures, which at lunar noon had risen to 235° F, are now falling slowly, a mere hint of the approaching plunge to 250° below zero after sunset” (Cortright, p. 62).

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The Soviet Luna 9 was the first space probe to soft land on the Moon in February 1966 and sent crude pictures from the surface. A few months later on June 2, 1966, Surveyor I joined it and landed on a dark, relatively smooth, mare surface north of the Crater Flamsteed, in the Ocean of Storms. The geographic coordinates of the site, encircled by hills and low mountains, were 2.41° S, 43.34° W. The robot spacecraft transmitted these unpublished high resolution pictures, showing closeups of the lunar surface and of the robot spacecraft, confirming that the lunar surface was strong enough to support an astronaut.

“Surveyor I’s camera system had a variable iris, changeable filters, and a rotating mirror assembly, which allowed the camera to look in almost any direction and take pictures under various lighting conditions, in either B&W or in color. Video pictures with 200-line resolution and with 600-line resolution were possible; the first with a quick-look mode and the capability of transmission with a low gain antenna; the second for use with the directional antenna and the high data rate. Surveyor l’s camera had a lens of variable focal length and could be pointed by radio command from Earth. This allowed scientists to choose their subject and the most suitable light and lens setting for photographing it. Surveyor’s scanning of its horizon, afforded man his first look around the landscape of another world” (Cortright, pp. 51-56).

“Surveyor I stands physically on the Moon, an enduring monument to its creators, a solitary artifact of men who live on another body of the solar system, a quarter of a million miles away, but its true resting place is in the pages of history, where even now is being inscribed man’s conquest of space.”
Homer Newell, Associate Administrator, NASA (Cortright, p. 62)