The Ranger program was the first of three intermediate steps leading to Apollo. Next came the Lunar Orbiter program, which photographedpotential Apollo landing sites. Altogether, five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were launched from 1966 to 1967. By the end of the fourth mission, Lunar Orbiter probes had surveyed 99 percent of the front and 80 percent of the backside of the Moon. While Lunar Orbiters snapped photographs overhead, the Soviets and Americans perfected soft landing techniques. In February 1966, a 100-kilogram Soviet probe, shaped like a beach ball, touched down on the Moon and returned the first images of the lunar surface.
The Americans countered the Soviet success with a program called Surveyor. Once on the surface, the tripod-shaped Surveyors evaluated the lunar soil and environment. Surveyor 1 made a successful soft landing in three centimeters of dust in the Ocean of Storms in June 1966. Surveyors 3, 5, 6 and 7 landed at different sites and carried out experiments on the surface, including analyzing the chemical composition of the lunar soil. All told,Surveyors acquired almost 90,000 images from five landing sites. The success of the Ranger and Surveyor programs and that of the five Lunar Orbiters gave the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) the confidence that humans could go the Moon.
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