Surveyor 1 lands on the moon

NASA’s first attempt to soft-land an unmanned space probe on another body in the solar system ends with a perfect landing: Surveyor 1 snaps photos from the moon’s surface, takes measurements of the local environment, and provides valuable engineering data about the surface that will prove helpful in constructing the much heavier Apollo lunar modules that will – it is hoped – take astronauts to the moon by the end of the decade.