Ranger 8 Transmits Moon Photos

Date: February 20, 1965 • Location: Rome, Italy

The NASA spacecraft Ranger 8 spacecraft transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing as planned into Mare Tranquillitatis.

Ranger 8 was a lunar probe in the Ranger program, a robotic spacecraft series launched by NASA in the early-to-mid-1960s to obtain the first close-up images of the Moon's surface. These pictures helped select landing sites for Apollo missions and were used for scientific study. During its 1965 mission, Ranger 8 transmitted 7,137 lunar surface photographs before it crashed into the Moon as planned. This was the second successful mission in the Ranger series, following Ranger 7. Ranger 8's design and purpose were very similar to those of Ranger 7. It had six television vidicon cameras: two full-scan and four partial-scan. Its sole purpose was to document the Moon's surface.