Ranger Program

A series of nine uncrewed NASA missions flown between 1961 and 1965 whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the lunar surface before impact. The first six missions failed; Ranger 7 succeeded in 1964, photographing its way down to a lunar plain later named Mare Cognitum and sending back more than 4,300 pictures from six cameras. Rangers 8 and 9 repeated the success. The images revealed that impact craters, not the smooth plains earlier telescopes suggested, dominate the Moon's surface at close range, informing the later Surveyor and Apollo landing-site studies.