60 years ago: Ranger August photos help you choose your Apollo site

Before Apollo astronauts stepped onto the moon, much was known about the lunar surface. Most scientists believed that the moon had a solid surface supporting the astronauts and their landers, but they believed that it was covered with a deep layer of dust that engulfed visitors. Until 1964, no close-up photographs of the moon were present, only those obtained by Earth-based telescopes.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California managed the Ranger Program, a series of spacecrafts designed to return close-up images before impacting the moon. Ranger 7 first achieved that goal in July 1964. On February 17, 1965, successor Ranger 8 was released towards the moon, and three days later returned an image of the moon. The success of the mission had helped the country meet President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing the human moon by the end of the decade.

Ranger 8 was lifted from Cape Kennedy, Cape Kennedy, Florida on February 17, 1965. The Atlas Agena Rocket first put the spacecraft into Earth orbit and then sent it into the lunar trajectory. The next day, the spacecraft revised its mid-course, and on February 20th Ranger 8 arrived on the moon. The spacecraft’s six cameras were turned on as planned, and they acquired images comparable to ground-based photos for calibration, about eight minutes earlier than their predecessor.

Ranger 8 took the first photo at an altitude of 1,560 miles, and during the final 23-minute flight, the spacecraft sent back 7,137 images of the moon. The final image was taken at an altitude of 1,600 feet and 0.28 seconds, and the Ranger 8 collided at 1.67 miles per second, with a resolution of about 5 feet. The spacecraft delivered a 16-mile impact from the intended target in a sea of ​​tranquility, completing its 248,900-mile flight. Scientists were interested in this region of the moon as a landing zone with the potential for future human landings. In fact, the Apollo 11 landed 44 miles southeast of the Ranger 8 Impact Site in July 1969.

Another Ranger mission for Ranger 9 followed in March 1965. The television network is broadcasting “live” images of Ranger 9 as the spacecraft approaches the Crater impact site. Close it as it happened.

Based on the photos returned by the last three rangers, the scientists were confident they would move on to the next stage of the Softlander Surveyor Series, the Robot Moon Exploration. The ranger’s photographs provided confidence that the surface of the moon supported the soft lands, and that the sea of ​​tranquility presented a good place for the first human landing. Four years after the last ranger image, Apollo 11 landed the first human on the moon.

The impact of the Ranger Probe left visible craters on the moon, which were later photographed by orbiting the spacecraft. Both the Lunar Orbiter 2 and the Apollo 16 were inspired by the Ranger 8 shocking sites in 1966 and 1972 at relatively low resolution, respectively. The Moon Reconnaissance Orbiter gave a more detailed image of the crash site in 2012.