Before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their ...

Click to open image viewer. The Ranger spacecraft gave scientists their first close look at the lunar surface. Nine Rangers were launched from 1961 through 1965. The first six attempts failed, but ...

This excerpt from "NASA: The 25th Year" shows the final sequence of images from one of the successful Ranger spacecraft that impacted the Moon 1964-1965. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to fly ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. On April 23, 1962, NASA launched the Ranger 4 mission to the moon. ['On This Day in Space' Video ...

Whereas the early Pioneer missions were attempts to simply reach the Moon’s vicinity, NASA’s Ranger missions of the 1960s were efforts to study the Moon with probes and then deliberately crash them ...

Not since Galileo pointed his primitive telescope at the stars some three centuries ago has man’s view of the universe been so singularly changed. In its faultless flight to the moon, the ...

The New York History of Science Lecture considers the impact of the Ranger program as NASA prepares for the return of humans to the moon.