12/10/2023 0 Comments Atlas agena ranger![]() ![]() In its mission in 1965, it transmitted 7,137 photographs of the lunar surface before it crashed into the Moon as planned. ![]() Ranger 8 was one of the spacecraft of the Ranger program, a series of unmanned space missions by NASA intended to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. Super Slow Motion: Ranger 8 Atlas-Agena 196D Launch NASA CCAFS LC-12 Jeff Quitney Published on High-speed camera photography super slow-motion views of the launch of Ranger VIII atop Atlas-Agena 196D from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 12. Originally a public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied. ![]() The impact crater or Ranger 8, approximately 13.5 m wide, was later photographed by Lunar Orbiter IV. The spacecraft performance was excellent. (The impact site is listed as about 2.72° N, 24.61° E in the initial report "Ranger 8 Photographs of the Moon".) Impact velocity was slightly less than 2.68 km/s, approximately 6,000 mph. After 64.9 hours of flight, impact occurred at 09:57:36.756 UT on 20 February 1965 in Mare Tranquillitatis at approximately 2.67° N, 24.65° E. The orbit plane was inclined 16.5 degrees to the lunar equator. The spacecraft encountered the lunar surface in a direct hyperbolic trajectory, with incoming asymptotic direction at an angle of -13.6 degrees from the lunar equator. The final image taken before impact has a resolution of 1.5 meters. Transmission of 7,137 photographs of good quality occurred over the final 23 minutes of flight. The first image was taken at 9:34:32 UT at an altitude of 2510 km. Ranger 8 reached the Moon on February 20, 1965. A planned terminal sequence to point the cameras more in the direction of flight just before reaching the Moon was cancelled to allow the cameras to cover a greater area of the Moon's surface. On 18 February at a distance of 160,000 km from Earth the planned mid-course maneuver took place, involving reorientation and a 59 second rocket burn. The Ranger solar panels were deployed, attitude control activated, and spacecraft transmissions switched from the omniantenna to the high-gain antenna by 21:30 UT. Fourteen minutes later a 90 second burn of the Agena put the spacecraft into lunar transfer trajectory, and several minutes later the Ranger and Agena separated. Mission profile The Atlas 196D and Agena B 6006 boosters performed nominally, injecting the Agena and Ranger 8 into an Earth parking orbit at 185 km altitude after launch. Cameras The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras. hour AgZnO batteries stored power for spacecraft operations.hour AgZnO batteries rated at 26.5 V with a capacity for nine hours of operation provided power to each of the separate communication/TV camera chains.Power was supplied by 9792 silicon solar cells contained in the two solar panels, giving a total array area of 2.3 square meters and producing 200 W. Orientation and attitude control about three axes were enabled by twelve nitrogen gas jets coupled to a system of three gyroscopes, four primary Sun sensors, two secondary Sun sensors, and an Earth sensor. Propulsion for the mid-course trajectory correction was provided by a 224 N thrust monopropellant hydrazine engine with four jet-vane vector control. The overall height of the spacecraft was 3.6 m. A cylindrical quasi-omnidirectional antenna was seated on top of the conical tower. Two solar panel wings, each 739 mm wide by 1537 mm long, extended from opposite edges of the base with a full span of 4.6 m, and a pointable high gain dish antenna was hinge mounted at one of the corners of the base away from the solar panels. The spacecraft consisted of a hexagonal aluminum frame base 1.5 m across on which was mounted the propulsion and power units, topped by a truncated conical tower which held the TV cameras. Rangers 6, 7, 8, and 9 were the Block 3 versions. Spacecraft design General Ranger spacecraft was originally designed, beginning in 1959, in three distinct phases, called "blocks". This was a second successful, after Ranger 7, mission of the series all the six previous attempts failed. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to fly straight down towards the Moon and send images back until the moment of impact. attempt to obtain close-up images of the Lunar surface. Ranger VIII Television Pictures of the Moon FebruNASA-JPL Jeff Quitney Published on Views of the moon taken from the Ranger VIII.
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