The Moon from Ranger-7: Mare Cognitum (4)

Ranger-9's ID:

Launched: 21 March 1965
Impacted Moon: 24 March 1965 at 14:08:20 UT
Location of impact: Latitude 12,91° South and Longitude 357,62° East - Alphonsus crater

Ranger Spacecraft Technical Data: each Ranger spacecraft had 6 cameras on board. The cameras were fundamentally the same with differences in exposure times, fields of view, lenses and scan rates. The camera system was divided into two channels, P (partial) and F (full). Each channel was self-contained with separate power supplies, timers, and transmitters. The F-channel had 2 cameras: the wide-angle A-camera and the narrow angle B-camera. The P-channel had four cameras: P1 and P2 (narrow angle) and P3 and P4 (wide angle). The final F-channel image was taken between 2,5 and 5" before impact (altitude about 5 Km) and the last P-channel image 0,2 to 0,4" before impact (altitude about 600 mt). The images provided better resolution than was available from Earth based views by a factor of 1000. These highly detailed images showed Apollo planners that finding a smooth landing site was not going to be easy.