Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Friday, May 29th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 16 minutes, setting at 9:18, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:01. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 5:01 tomorrow morning.

The United States second unmanned moon program in the 1960s was the Surveyor program, to soft land spacecraft on the moon. This was the Surveyor program, which launched 5 Surveyor spacecraft to the moon from 1966 through 1968, three of which were successful, including the very first one. It showed that the moon’s surface was solid enough to support spacecraft landings. There was some speculation earlier that moon dust would be electrostatically charged and suspended above the solid surface of the moon preventing a landing on the surface. The moon’s surface proved to be solid enough, paving the way for the Apollo landings to come. Apollo 12 landed near Surveyor 3 and took a souvenir back to earth, the camera.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

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