Lunar Orbiter 3

Lunar Orbiter 3 was the third of five lunar probes of the Lunar Orbiter program of the U.S. space agency NASA. With the Lunar Orbiter program the moon should be photographically recorded and mapped in order to find landing sites for the space probes of the Surveyor program and for the manned lunar landing.

Mission

Lunar Orbiter 3 on 5 February 1967, and reached the moon on February 8. 21:54 UTC waved the probe into orbit 210-1802 km altitude with an inclination of 20.9 °. The circulation time was 3 hours and 25 minutes.

After four days the orbit has been lowered. The orbital altitude was only 55-1847 km. The image recording started on 15 February and lasted until February 23. As of March 2, 1967 the recordings were read and returned to Earth. On March 4, 1967 engine blew in the transport mechanism of the camera, making 25 % of the images could not be read. Overall, the mission provided 149 medium-resolution images and 477 images of high resolution, including the landing site of Surveyor 1 On October 9, 1967 Lunar Orbiter 3 was brought specifically to crash and struck at 14.3 ° N, 97.7 ° W on.