An artists principle of NASAs Ranger spacecraft approaching the Moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
After the facility of NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratorys first significant task was to check out the moon, taking close-up images prior to crash landing as part of a series of missions called Ranger. JPL, however, had grander plans.
The laboratory, having actually constructed and helped introduce the very first U.S. satellite into area, wished to check out not only the moon, but close-by planets. But as this hour-long episode documents, JPL would be humbled by a string of failures that threatened the labs very future. “We didnt understand what we were doing,” one veteran JPL engineer confides in the program, “and there was no one around to inform us.”
Paradoxically, an effective (although barely so) flyby of Venus by Mariner 2 would provide the United States its very first “First in Space.”
And after lastly prospering with its Ranger program, JPL would go on to manage the highly successful Surveyor missions that soft arrived at the moon, functioning as pathfinders for the Apollo astronauts. Destination Moon relives JPLs struggles and victories at the moon and Venus.
Destination Moon is Episode 3 in the documentary series “JPL and the Space Age.”
JPL and the Space Age
By NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory
January 22, 2023