Ranger Takes Close-Up Moon Photos Revealing Craters Only 3 Feet Wide; Data Gained on Landing Site for Man: "This event took place on July 31, 1964, and was reported in the The New York Times the following day.
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You may be interested in reading more about the Ranger series at NASA History.

Lunar Impact
Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger (Washington, D.C.: NASA SP-4210, 1977) by R. Cargill Hall. As the preface begins, "Ranger was the first successful American project of lunar exploration." This robotic spacecraft project of the early 1960s laid the groundwork for Project Apollo and much future robotic space science work. Hall tells an engaging story, complete with failures as well as triumphs and the scientific, engineering, and political struggles in between. Special thanks go to volunteer Dirk Stoffels for formatting the text and images of this book for the Web.