The objectives for this mission were to perform a lunar soft landing (in an area well removed from the maria to provide a type of terrain photography and lunar sample significantly different from those of other Surveyor missions); obtain postlanding TV pictures; determine the relative abundances of chemical elements; manipulate the lunar material; obtain touchdown dynamics data; and obtain thermal and radar reflectivity data.

On January 20, while the craft was still in daylight, the TV camera clearly saw two laser beams aimed at it from the night side of the crescent Earth, one from Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, and the other at Table Mountain at Wrightwood, California.

[5][6] Surveyor 7 was the first probe to detect the faint glow on the lunar horizon after dark that is now thought to be light reflected from electrostatically levitated Moon dust, a phenomenon known as Lunar horizon glow[7] The TV camera consisted of a vidicon tube, 25 and 100 mm focal length lenses, shutters, polarizing filters, and iris mounted nearly vertically and surmounted by a mirror that could be adjusted by stepping motors to move in both azimuth and elevations.

[8] Each frame required nominally one second to be read from the vidicon and utilized a 220 kHz bandwidth for transmission.

The television images were displayed on a slow scan monitor coated with a long persistency phosphor.

During the second lunar day, 45 pictures were transmitted before loss of power caused suspension of camera operation.

One system, containing two sensors, detected the energy spectra of the alpha particles scattered from the lunar surface, and the other, containing four sensors, detected energy spectra of the protons produced via reaction (alpha and proton) in the surface material.

A digital electronics package, located in a compartment on the spacecraft, continuously telemetered signals to earth whenever the experiment was operating.

The spectra contained quantitative information on all major elements in the samples except for hydrogen, helium, and lithium.

Mission controllers successfully used the surface soil sampler claw to push the alpha backscattering instrument into the proper position to conduct its experiments.

The scoop was mounted on a pantograph arm that could be extended about 1.5 m or retracted close to the spacecraft motor drive.