50 Years Ago Today: Ranger 7

Ranger

50 years ago, on July 31, 1964, Ranger 7 took the first pictures at close range of the Moon. These pictures were made with Angenieux 25mm f: 0.95 M1 lenses.

The Ranger program was a series of nine unmanned space missions by the United States in the 1960s, between 1961 and 1965, whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon: large-scale topographic information needed for the Surveyor and Apollo projects. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact. A series of mishaps, however, led to the failure of the first six flights.

Ranger 7 was the first US space probe to successfully transmit close images of the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely successful flight of the Ranger program. Launched on July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. Ranger 7 reached the Moon on July 31, 1964.

Angenieux25mmM1

Angenieux 25 mm M1 lens

Read the complete story from Angenieux about Ranger and Apollo missions using Angenieux lenses. Download the PDF here:  AngenieuxRanger-50Years-fdt

 

 

 

 

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3 Responses:

  1. Danys BRUYERE says:

    Very interesting…Think we can put a PL mount on the F0,95 lens???
    Maybe the folks at Angenieux can make a whole set, and hopefully help some of our lovely blockbuster films from crashing like “Led Zeppelins”

    Thanks for the tidbit!

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