Ranger 7
Ranger 7 — the mission that finally delivered (launched 28 July 1964). In the minutes before it crashed into Mare Cognitum on 31 July, it radioed back more than 4,300 photographs of the Moon — the first US close-ups, a thousand times sharper than anything seen from Earth.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- NASA / JPL
- Launched
- July 28, 1964
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 1.01 AU
- Distance from Earth
- 424,353 km
- Distance from Venus
- 0.603 AU
Mission
Ranger 7 broke the curse — and did it spectacularly. By the summer of 1964 the Ranger programme had flown six times and failed six times; another loss might have ended it. Launched on 28 July 1964, Ranger 7 flew a clean trajectory toward Mare Cognitum, and this time the cameras worked. In the final seventeen minutes before it smashed into the surface on 31 July, Ranger 7 radioed back more than 4,300 photographs, the last taken from less than half a kilometre up. The best were a thousand times sharper than anything achievable from Earth, revealing that the maria were strewn with small craters but were smooth enough, engineers judged, for a spacecraft to land. After years of humiliation it was a total triumph, and it proved the Rangers could finally do their job. Two more successful flights would follow.
- 1964MoonImpactor
Returned the first US close-up photographs of the Moon — over 4,300 images, a thousand times sharper than any from Earth — in the minutes before impacting Mare Cognitum.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image