On Friday, November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated. He was a loved president and it was a blow to everyone. I was in my fourth grade classroom when we were all told about this. For days, we watched the TV as the story was told and retold. I remember, we were watching TV live, when we saw Jack Ruby shoot Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he was being led from the police headquarters. Kennedy launched the race to the moon. It had to carry on without him, but his words were remembered and frequently replayed.
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| First picture taken |
In 1964, the next generation of Ranger was ready to fly. It had better cameras and could distinguish items about 12 inches in diameter. We were looking for a safe landing site. Telescopes could only see so much. Closer pictures were needed. It was challenging to pick a landing site. We did not know the composition of the surface. There was debate that it was deep dust and that it would engulf a craft trying to land.
Ranger 6 hit the moon on target, but the cameras failed. Bummer, more defeat. Six months later, with a redesigned camera, Ranger 7 flew. It made it and sent back 4,308 photographs. Photos were printed full page on the front pages of newspapers and every magazine you saw. There were lots of them and over the days, more were released. We had gone to the moon and sent back close up pictures. We made it.
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| Second picture taken |
I cut out every picture I could find and pasted them together and had them all organized. I still remember how excited I was. Here are some of the first close-up pictures taken of the moon. These were 1000 times more detailed than what we had before.
Rangers 8 and 9 did even better. We were reliably getting to the moon and the equipment was working when we got there. It started to seem like we could do this. Three successful missions in a row! Our confidence was being rebuilt. None too soon, the first Gemini, 2-man spacecraft, launched and landed while Ranger 9 was on the way to the moon..
Complete photo archive: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/ranger/
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