Surveyor program in the context of "Surveyor 7"

The 1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic spacecraft mission, part of NASA's Lunar Orbiter program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data.

Lunar horizon glow is a phenomenon in which dust particles in the Moon's thin atmosphere create a glow during lunar sunset. The Surveyor program provided the first data and photos of the phenomenon. Astronauts in lunar orbit observed it during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 missions.

Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) is a launch complex located at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Located south of the Missile Row launch range, the complex originally consisted of two pads—designated LC-36A and LC-36B—to support the flights of Atlas launch vehicles equipped with a Centaur upper stage. From the 1960s to the 1980s, LC-36 was used by NASA and the United States Air Force to launch many payloads from the Atlas-Centaur and its derivatives, including the Pioneer, Surveyor, and Mariner probes. During the late 1980s, LC-36B was also used to launch the Atlas G, and General Dynamics (and later Lockheed Martin) modified the two pads to support the larger Atlas I, Atlas II, and Atlas III throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Following the Atlas program's relocation to Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) in 2005, LC-36 stood vacant until Blue Origin acquired the lease in 2015 for use by their heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. The company made extensive modifications to the complex during this time, including demolishing 36A and 36B to build one large pad in place, as well as integrating the neighboring Launch Complex 11 (LC-11) into the facility. Following this large-scale renovation, the new era of LC-36 commenced with the maiden flight of New Glenn in January 2025.