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Ranger program

Series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s

Instance of: NASA program

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact. A series of mishaps, however, led to the failure of the first six flights. At one point, the program was called "shoot and hope". Congress launched an investigation into "problems of management" at NASA Headquarters and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After two reorganizations of the agencies, Ranger 7 successfully returned images in July 1964, followed by two more successful missions.

Overview

All data

17 statements · 29% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Ended: 1965
Started: 1959
1
Sources
1.solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/2287/nasa-facts-rangers-and-surveyors-to-the-moon/
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Manufacturer: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Operator: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Start point: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

On other databases

10 identifiers linking Ranger program across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

29%

externally sourced

Source last edited July 10, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). Ranger program (Q466876). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/ranger-program-Q466876