Jan. 26, 1962 - An attempt to send the Ranger 3, a complex 727-pound spacecraft, to take close-up television pictures of the moon failed today. The craft had also been intended to land the first instruments on the moon’s surface. The Ranger 3 was given “excessive velocity” by the two-stage Atlas-Agena B rocket fired from Cape Canaveral this afternoon, NASA announced. As a result, it will miss the moon by about 25,000 miles on the 237,000-mile trip. The failure was a disappointing setback to the space agency.
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