Ranger 7 impact
Ranger 7 · 1964 CE · The Moon
Photograph the Moon at close range.
Historical context
NASA needed close-up pictures to choose Apollo landing sites and to know whether the surface could bear a lander. After repeated failures, Ranger 7 finally delivered.
The voyage, step by step
The seventh try
28 July 1964
On 28 July 1964 an Atlas-Agena lifts the last of a badly discredited series off a Florida pad.
Toward the Moon
29 July 1964
Ranger 7 flies a crash course designed to send pictures until the last instant, with no brakes and no film.
Cameras on, eighteen minutes out
1964 CE
The six cameras warm up and begin sending, each scanning a different field at a different rate.
Thousands of close-ups
1964 CE
In its final minutes it returns 4,308 images, the last from 480 metres up, showing stones a foot across.
Silence at Pasadena
1964 CE
At 13:25 the signal cuts off as the spacecraft strikes at over nine thousand kilometres an hour.
Outcome
Returned thousands of images before impact.
Ranger 7
NASA probe that returned the first close-up images of the Moon before impacting the surface.
Sources
Continue exploring
- Luna 9 landingLuna 9 · 1966 CE
- Surveyor 3 landingSurveyor 3 · 1967 CE – 1969 CE
- Apollo 8 lunar orbitApollo 8 · 1968 CE
- Apollo 11Neil Armstrong · 1969 CE