Failed · Failure
Ranger 3 was the first of the Block II Ranger designs, built to televise the lunar surface during descent and rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon. A series of malfunctions beginning with a booster guidance error left it on the wrong trajectory, and it missed the Moon by approximately 36,800 km and entered a heliocentric orbit.
- Destinations
- Moon
- Launch vehicle
- Atlas-Agena B
- Launch site
- Cape Canaveral, United States
- Countries
- United States
- Mission types
- Impactor, Lander
Chronology
Mission timeline
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Ranger 3 · Spacecraft
Destinations: Moon
Trajectory record
Trajectory dataset not yet available
No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through August 24, 2026
- Ranger 3 - NASA NSSDCA Spacecraft Details — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Moon Facts — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context