Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. On April 23, 1962, NASA launched the Ranger 4 mission to the moon. [‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com]After the ...

Whereas the early Pioneer missions were attempts to simply reach the Moon’s vicinity, NASA’s Ranger missions of the 1960s were efforts to study the Moon with probes and then deliberately crash them ...

Ranger 9, the last spacecraft in the Ranger series, was launched on March 21, 1965, and impacted the Moon on March 24, landing just 3 miles from its predicted point in the Alonsus crater. The ...

Before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their ...

This excerpt from "NASA: The 25th Year" shows the final sequence of images from one of the successful Ranger spacecraft that impacted the Moon 1964-1965. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to fly ...

The New York History of Science Lecture considers the impact of the Ranger program as NASA prepares for the return of humans to the moon.