Ranger 9 Lofted into Space

Mar. 21, 1965 - The last vehicle of the Ranger program was fired toward the moon today. Its prime task is to send close-up pictures of a lunar crater where peculiar activity has been observed.

Ranger 9 was lifted into an overcast sky by a thundering Atlas-Agena rocket at 4:37 p.m. at Cape Kennedy, Fla., and all indications pointed to a successful mission.

About 70 minutes later, it was announced that the vehicle had separated from its booster rockets and was on its way, its wings spread and gathering electric power from sunlight.

Because of the extreme accuracy of the launching vehicle, it was announced at 9:35 tonight, Ranger 9 was heading for an impact point on the moon only about 400 miles from the spacecraft’s target, the Alphonsus Crater. In view of the extremely small flight-path correction needed to hit the target, the planned correction, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. tomorrow, may be delayed 24 hours.

The spacecraft is scheduled to reach the moon, 245,500 miles from the Earth, on Wednesday.

The crater lies just below the center of the visible face of the moon. It is about 75 miles wide and is ringed by mountains that rise about 10,000 feet above what, from the Earth, appears to be a smooth crater floor.

This floor, however, is traversed by a ridge, and on this ridge, in the center of the crater, there is a small mountain.

It is in the vicinity of this mountain that periodic eruptions of gas have been reported in recent years, suggesting that the moon may not be so inactive a body as supposed.

The eruptions are not volcanic, in that they are not fiery. No activity has been observed in Alphonsus when it is night on the moon.

More important to the chief mission of the Ranger project is to determine if the floor of this and other large craters would make a suitable landing site for the astronauts of Project Apollo. The final Ranger launching came two days before the scheduled initiation of the manned spaceflights of Project Gemini. The goal of the latter is to develop the skills and techniques of space rendezvous essential to return the astronauts from the Moon.

The two astronauts slated to make Tuesday’s flight — which will be the first American two-man flight — are Maj. Virgil Grissom and Lieut. Comdr. John Young. Their backup team consists of Comdr. Walter Schirra Jr. and Maj. Thomas Stafford.

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