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Landing · 🇺🇸 United States · NASA

Surveyor 3

Ended

Oceanus Procellarum

Facts last verified against primary sources on 2026-10-10. Mission page →

Landing

1967-04-20 00:04 UTC

Target

3.02°S 23.42°W

Located after landing

Landed

1967-04-20 00:04 UTC

Soft landing

Sun · touchdown

+10.40°

E (az 90°) · whole disk up

Earth · touchdown

+72.47°

E (az 102°) · direct link to Earth possible

Located after landing

2 km reference ring

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Site plan

N2 kmSunEarthApollo 12157 m2.0 km

North up, true scale around the target point. Arrows: where the Sun and the Earth sit on the horizon at touchdown.

The sky from the landing site

Where the Sun and the Earth sit above the horizon from two days before touchdown through the following four weeks. Predicted by JPL Horizons for a smooth Moon: hills and crater walls are not included, and near the poles they can hide a Sun that is a degree or two up.

-100°-90°-80°-70°-60°-50°-40°-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°50°60°70°80°90°100°NNEESESSWWNWNSun · touchdownEarth
-150°-100°-50°0°50°100°150°smooth-Moon horizonApr 18Apr 23Apr 28May 3May 8May 13May 18SunEarthtouchdown
Sun up
49% of the window
Next sunset
1967-05-03 22:00 UTC
Earth up
100% of the window
Earth elevation
57.8° to 73.8°

Source: JPL Horizons observer tables (DE441, Moon mean-Earth frame), Sun and Earth seen from 3.016°S 23.418°W at 0 m on the 1,737.4 km sphere, hourly, 1967-04-18 to 1967-05-18. “Sun up” means any part of the disk is above the smooth horizon. Method: landing-site sky.

Engine plume: reference distances

N600 m2 kmApollo 12157 m1.0 km
  1. 155 mApollo 12 → Surveyor 3. Apollo 12 landed about 155 m from Surveyor 3, and its plume sandblasted the older lander. source
  2. 600 m1 cm gravel, Apollo-sized lander. Gravel 1 cm across leaves a Lunar Module–sized lander's plume at about 30 m/s and lands within 600 m; NASA gives up to about 1.5 km for 1–10 cm rocks. source
  3. 2 kmNASA heritage-site standoff. NASA recommends targeting touchdown at least 2 km from U.S. lander heritage sites (0.5 km from impact sites). source

No CLPS or Artemis lander has a published plume keep-out distance; these are reference cases, drawn around the target point, not limits for this lander. Fine dust leaves a plume at up to kilometres per second and is not stopped by any ring. Apollo 12 is inside 2 km of the target point.

Hardware already nearby

  • Apollo 12NASA · 1969 · soft landing157 m NW

Great-circle distance from the target point on the 1,737.4 km sphere, to landing and impact sites in our curated table.

Timeline

No milestones are published yet.

Sources