Early American Unmanned Lunar Missions (1958–1965)
In contrast to Soviet lunar exploration triumphs in 1959, success eluded initial American efforts to reach the Moon with the Pioneer and Ranger programs. Fifteen consecutive U.S. unmanned lunar missions over a six-year period from 1958 to 1964 all failed their primary photographic missions; however, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions.
Failures included three American attempts in 1962 to hard land small seismometer packages released by the main Ranger spacecraft. These surface packages were to use retrorockets to survive landing, unlike the parent vehicle, which was designed to deliberately crash onto the surface. The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h)
| U.S. mission | Mass (kg) | Launch vehicle | Launched | Mission goal | Mission result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pioneer 0 | 38 | Thor-Able | 17 August 1958 | Lunar orbit | Failure – first stage explosion; destroyed |
| Pioneer 1 | 34 | Thor-Able | 11 October 1958 | Lunar orbit | Failure – software error; reentry |
| Pioneer 2 | 39 | Thor-Able | 8 November 1958 | Lunar orbit | Failure – third stage misfire; reentry |
| Pioneer 3 | 6 | Juno | 6 December 1958 | Lunar flyby | Failure – first stage misfire, reentry |
| Pioneer 4 | 6 | Juno | 3 March 1959 | Lunar flyby | Partial success – first US craft to reach escape velocity, lunar flyby too far to shoot photos due to targeting error; solar orbit |
| Pioneer P-1 | 168 | Atlas-Able | 24 September 1959 | Lunar orbit | Failure – pad explosion; destroyed |
| Pioneer P-3 | 168 | Atlas-Able | 29 November 1959 | Lunar orbit | Failure – payload shroud; destroyed |
| Pioneer P-30 | 175 | Atlas-Able | 25 September 1960 | Lunar orbit | Failure – second stage anomaly; reentry |
| Pioneer P-31 | 175 | Atlas-Able | 15 December 1960 | Lunar orbit | Failure – first stage explosion; destroyed |
| Ranger 1 | 306 | Atlas – Agena | 23 August 1961 | Prototype test | Failure – upper stage anomaly; reentry |
| Ranger 2 | 304 | Atlas – Agena | 18 November 1961 | Prototype test | Failure – upper stage anomaly; reentry |
| Ranger 3 | 330 | Atlas – Agena | 26 January 1962 | Moon Landing | Failure – booster guidance; solar orbit |
| Ranger 4 | 331 | Atlas – Agena | 23 April 1962 | Moon Landing | Partial success – first U.S. spacecraft to reach another celestial body; crash impact – no photos returned |
| Ranger 5 | 342 | Atlas – Agena | 18 October 1962 | Moon Landing | Failure – spacecraft power; solar orbit |
| Ranger 6 | 367 | Atlas – Agena | 30 January 1964 | Lunar impact | Failure – spacecraft camera; crash impact |
| Ranger 7 | 367 | Atlas – Agena | 28 July 1964 | Lunar impact | Success – returned 4308 photos, crash impact |
| Ranger 8 | 367 | Atlas – Agena | 17 February 1965 | Lunar impact | Success – returned 7137 photos, crash impact |
| Ranger 9 | 367 | Atlas – Agena | 21 March 1965 | Lunar impact | Success – returned 5814 photos, crash impact |
Read more about this topic: Moon Landing
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