1967-05-04 · 59 years ago

Lunar Orbiter 4 — launch

Date in UTC

Lunar Orbiter 4 was a robotic U.S. spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, designed to orbit the Moon, after the three previous orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection. It was given a more general objective, to "perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing 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 polar high lunar orbit for data acquisition.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_4. Related NASA reference: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/lunar-orbiter-4/. 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 4
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
Outcome
Successful

Context and qualifications

Launch code: DS. Source references: NASA-TM-X-3487; MOR.

Sources and attribution

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