On this day in 1964 — 57 years ago — Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, took the first close-up images of the moon.
The probe took 4,308 images before it impacted with the lunar surface northwest of the Sea of the Clouds. The images were 1,000 times as clear as anything previously seen through earth-bound telescopes.
NASA had attempted a similar mission earlier in the year — Ranger 6 — but the probe's cameras had failed as it descended to the lunar surface.
Ranger 7, launched from Earth on July 28, 1964, successfully activated its cameras 17 minutes, or 1,300 miles, before impact and began beaming the images back to NASA's receiving station in California.
The pictures showed that the lunar surface was not excessively dusty or otherwise treacherous to a potential spacecraft landing, thus lending encouragement to the NASA plan to send astronauts to the moon.
In July, 1969, two Americans walked on the moon in the first Apollo Program lunar landing mission.
Thanks History.com
The first image of the moon sent by Ranger 7, July 31, 1964