These probes were designed to photograph the lunar surface at increasing levels of detail before crashing into the surface.
THE MAN ON THE MOON PICTURES SERIES
At the same time, the robotic precursors would collect valuable information, constituting the first scientific exploration of another planetary body.Īmerica’s first step was the Ranger series of hard landers. To ensure that human crews could safely land and depart from the lunar surface, it was important to understand its environment, surface and processes. The Apollo program greatly accelerated interest in exploring the moon.
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Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In response to the 1961 flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, President John F. From these early, poor quality images, we discovered that the far side has surprisingly little of the dark, smooth mare plains that cover about a third of the near side. They followed this success with a number of other robotic probes, culminating later the same year with Luna 3, which photographed the far side of the moon, never visible from Earth. The Soviets struck first, flying Luna 1 by the moon in January 1959. With the shocking launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the moon changed from a distant silver disk in the sky to a real place, a probable destination for probes and people. The Space Age arrives: Robots to the Moon But it took space-age exploration to show us how the moon is connected to human existence on a very fundamental level. We’ve known for centuries about the effects on tides and biological cycles from a waxing and waning moon. Exploration of the moon has taught us much about the evolution of the solar system and ourselves. The moon has held our imaginations for millennia, yet it is only in modern times that we have visited this body, first with robotic machines and then with astronauts.