Before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their ...

Click to open image viewer. The Ranger spacecraft gave scientists their first close look at the lunar surface. Nine Rangers were launched from 1961 through 1965. The first six attempts failed, but ...

Whereas the early Pioneer missions were attempts to simply reach the Moon’s vicinity, NASA’s Ranger missions of the 1960s were efforts to study the Moon with probes and then deliberately crash them ...

Ranger 9, the last spacecraft in the Ranger series, was launched on March 21, 1965, and impacted the Moon on March 24, landing just 3 miles from its predicted point in the Alonsus crater. The ...

On April 23, 1962, Ranger 4 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Three days later, it became the first U.S. satellite to reach the Moon's surface-when it crashed into the body. Ranger 4 was ...

This excerpt from "NASA: The 25th Year" shows the final sequence of images from one of the successful Ranger spacecraft that impacted the Moon 1964-1965. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to fly ...

The New York History of Science Lecture considers the impact of the Ranger program as NASA prepares for the return of humans to the moon.

The moon has fascinated humans for millennia. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The moon is Earth's most constant companion and the ...