Failure
The target area proposed was within Sinus Medii. The Atlas-Centaur had placed Surveyor 2 on a path to the moon that was only 130 km from its aim point. During the midcourse correction maneuver, one vernier engine failed to ignite, resulting in an unbalanced thrust that caused the spacecraft to tumble for its remaining 54 hours. Attempts to salvage the mission failed. Contact was lost with the spacecraft at 9:35 UTC, September 22. The spacecraft was targeted at Sinus Medii, but crashed near Copernicus crater. The spacecraft was calculated to have impacted the lunar surface at 03:18 UTC, September 23, 1966. Its weight on impact was 644 lb (292 kg), and speed was about 6000 miles an hour (2.6 km/s = 5840 mph), slightly over lunar escape velocity (2.4 km/s) and similar to the impact velocities of the Ranger program spacecraft.
Read more about this topic: Surveyor 2
Famous quotes containing the word failure:
“Moralists love to discourse on the hollowness of success; about the hollowness of failure they are silent.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible—that is, that one is male and the other female.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,—it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)