Ranger 5 - Mission

Mission

The mission was designed to boost towards the Moon by an Atlas/Agena, undergo one mid-course correction, and impact the lunar surface. At the appropriate altitude the capsule was to separate and the retrorockets ignite to cushion the landing. Due to an unknown malfunction after injection into lunar trajectory from Earth parking orbit, the spacecraft failed to receive power. The batteries ran down after 8 hours, 44 minutes, rendering the spacecraft inoperable. Ranger 5 missed the Moon by 725 km. It is now in a heliocentric orbit. Gamma-ray data were collected for four hours prior to the loss of power. Mission controllers tracked it to a distance of 1.3 million km (808,000) miles.

This was the third attempt to impact the lunar surface with a Block II Ranger spacecraft. On this mission, just 15 minutes after normal operation, a malfunction led to the transfer of power from solar to battery power. Normal operation never resumed; battery power was depleted after 8 hours, and all spacecraft systems died. The first midcourse correction was never implemented, and Ranger 5 passed the Moon at a range of 724 kilometers on 21 October and entered heliocentric orbit. It was tracked to a distance of 1,271,381 kilometers. Before loss of signal, the spacecraft sent back about 4 hours of data from the gamma-ray experiment.

Following the failure of this launch (missing the moon), the electronic assembly for the next versions were completely rebuilt by RCA Astro Electronics Division in East Windsor, New Jersey. The satellites rebuilt by RCA Astro worked up to expectations. All photos were returned and helped NASA determine good landing sites for the lunar landers.