Lunar photography: Techniques and results

Conclusion The lunar photography missions have included flyby, impacter, lander, and orbiter spacecrafts. These missions have provided photographs of the far side of the moon and a ten-fold increase in frontside resolution plus higher resolution of selected frontside areas. The resolutions which have been achieved vary from 1 m for the Lunar Orbiter to 1/2 m for the impacting Ranger to millimeters for Luna-IX and the Surveyors. The return from these missions have resolved much of the mystery surrounding the moon.The prime objective of the U.S. photographic missions has been the support of the Apollo-manned lunar landing program. The Ranger program, the Surveyor program, and the Lunar Orbiter program provided a logical progression in the utilization of a developing space exploration technology. These programs have provided the required information and have confirmed that the Apollo landing vehicle design is compatible with the conditions to be experienced on selected areas of the lunar surface.The future manned landing missions can be expected to provide additional lunar photography. Since the astronauts can be more selective in their photography, even more outstanding and informative results should be achieved. The addition of movies and even live television coverage will permit earth-based man to share more directly in the manned exploration of the moon.The unmanned photographic exploration of the moon has provided much of the technology required for similar missions to the planets. The U.S. Mariner-IV was the first successful mission to obtain close-up photographs of the planet Mars. It can be expected that both the U.S.A. and Russia will try for further photographic successes in the exploration of our solar system.This paper presents the results of one phase of research carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under Contract No. NAS 7-100, sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.