The ranger project

The mission of the Ranger project was to obtain high-resolution pictures of the surface of the Moon to support the Apollo manned lunar-landing programme and for use by the scientific community. It was carried out by the Ranger t.v. system, which was able to obtain lunar pictures with a definition at least 1,000 times better than those obtained with Earth-based telescopes. Rangers VII, VIII, and IX took over 16,000 high-resolution pictures of the Moon - perhaps the greatest advance in lunar exploration since the invention of the telescope.