1966-11-06 · 60 years ago

Lunar Orbiter 2 — launch

Date in UTC

The 1966 Lunar Orbiter 2 robotic spacecraft mission, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data. The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and injected into an elliptical near-equatorial lunar orbit for data acquisition after 92.6 hours' flight time. The initial orbit was 196 by 1,850 kilometres (122 mi × 1,150 mi) at an inclination of 11.8 degrees. The perilune was lowered to 49.7 kilometres (30.9 mi) five days later after 33 orbits.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_2. Related NASA reference: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/lunar-orbiter-2/. Description adapted from Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Category
Launches and Flight Tests
Type
Orbital launch
Subjects
Space transportation
Mission
Lunar Orbiter 2
Organization
NASA Lewis Research Center
Participants
US Air Force Space Systems Division
Vehicle
Atlas SLV-3 Agena D
Location
Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida
Country
US
Human involvement
Uncrewed
Outcome
Successful

Sources and attribution

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