February 2

U.S. Finally Reaches Moon with a Bang

On February 2, 1964, the United States crashed an unmanned craft called Ranger 6 onto the moon—on purpose! This craft was equipped with six specialized video cameras to take pictures of the lunar surface. Unfortunately, the camera system failed and no pictures were sent back to Earth. The Ranger 7, 8, and 9 missions that followed were more successful because scientists received the images of the moon's surface before the ships crashed. The Ranger missions allowed NASA scientists to see the landscape of the moon where the astronauts of Apollo 11 would land five years later