Ranger 7
Ranger 7
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| Mission type | Lunar impactor |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA |
| COSPAR ID | 1964-041A |
| SATCAT no. | 842 |
| Mission duration | 65.5 hours |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Manufacturer | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Launch mass | 365.7 kilograms (806 lb) |
| Power | 200 W |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | July 28, 1964, 16:50:00 UTC |
| Rocket | Atlas LV-3 Agena-B |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral LC-12 |
| Lunar impactor | |
| Impact date | July 31, 1964, 13:25:48.82 UTC |
| Impact site | 10°38′02″S 20°40′38″W / 10.6340°S 20.6771°W |
Ranger 7 was the first American space probe to successfully transmit close images of the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely successful flight of the Ranger program. Launched on July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 was designed to achieve a lunar-impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras - two wide-angle (channel F, cameras A and B) and four narrow-angle (channel P) - to accomplish these objectives. The cameras were arranged in two separate chains, or channels, each self-contained with separate power supplies, timers, and transmitters so as to afford the greatest reliability and probability of obtaining high-quality video pictures. Ranger 7 transmitted over 4,300 photographs during the final 17 minutes of its flight. After 68.6 hours of flight, the spacecraft landed between Mare Nubium and Oceanus Procellarum. This landing site was later named Mare Cognitum. The velocity at impact was 1.62 miles per second, and the performance of the spacecraft exceeded hopes. No other experiments were carried on the spacecraft.
Although NASA had attempted to put a positive spin on Ranger 6 on the grounds that everything except the camera system had worked well, William Coughlin, editor of the publication Missiles and Rockets, called it a "one hundred percent failure" and JPL's record thus far was "a disgrace". The mission had not been a complete failure, but Coughlin was not alone in his opinion that Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, a nonprofit laboratory and extension of the University of California, was a "soft" academic environment without the drive or ambition needed to make the missions succeed. He considered Ranger a "loser" and for a while, anyone at NASA involved in the Ranger program tried to conceal it. It was also being said that sending probes up for the sole purpose of returning images was pointless and accomplished nothing that Apollo could not also achieve.
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