31 July 1964
Last Quarter, 57% lit
The first close-up of the Moon
Ranger 7 sent back 4,316 photographs of the lunar surface and then, as designed, crashed into it.
The last frame was taken 2.3 seconds before impact and shows detail a thousand times finer than anything achievable from Earth. Six Ranger missions had failed before this one worked.
- Date
- 31 July 1964
- Moon computed for
- 13:00 local time, UTC
- Phase
- Last Quarter
- Illuminated
- 57%
Source: NASA NSSDC (opens in a new tab)