Surveyor 6 lands on the moon

NASA’s robotic explorer Surveyor 6 lands safely on the moon, taking soil samples and pictures from the surface and, for the first time, testing an alpha-scattering surface analysis device of a type that would be included on many later missions to Mars. With the conclusion of Surveyor 6’s operations, the Surveyor probes have completed all of the tasks that were prerequisites to future Apollo manned moon missions. Surveyor 6 successfully lands in the same region of the moon that Surveyors 2 and 4 failed to reach.