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The second of the series of spacecraft launched by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the early 1960s to further lunar and interplanetary exploration, Ranger 2, like its predecessor, was built to test flight systems for a future lunar mission. .
Launch date: Nov. 18, 1961
Ranger 3 was NASA's first attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon. .
Launch date: Jan. 26, 1962
The Ranger 4 spacecraft, which was designed to collect data on interplanetary space, photograph the moon up close and make a rough landing on the lunar surface, was the first American spacecraft to reach another celestial body. .
Launch date: April 23, 1962
The third attempt by the United States to land a spacecraft on the moon, Ranger 5 was designed to collect data on interplanetary space, photograph the moon up close and make a rough landing on the lunar surface. .
Launch date: Oct. 18, 1962
Ranger 6 was principally designed to transmit high-resolution photographs of the moon before impacting the lunar surface and was part of the series of nine Ranger spacecraft launched in the early 1960s to explore the moon. .
Launch date: Jan. 30, 1964
The Ranger 7 lunar lander was the first true success in the United States' early quest to explore the moon and heralded a new era of exploration that saw dramatically more mission successes than failures. .
Launch date: July 28, 1964
Following on the success of the Ranger 7 mission, which was the first United States spacecraft to photograph the moon up close, Ranger 8 took more than 7,000 high-resolution images of the moon before impacting the lunar surface on February 20, 1965. .
Launch date: Feb. 17, 1965
Ranger 9 was the last of the Ranger series of spacecraft launched in the 1960s to explore the moon and was designed to image and impact the moon's crater Alphonsus, which was thought to be the site of recent lunar volcanic activity. .
Launch date: March 21, 1965