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| A Ranger 5 launch cover from "SpaceCraft", postmarked at Cape Canaveral with a hand cancel on October 18, 1962. |
Ranger 5 was the third U.S. attempt to send a spacecraft to the Moon, carrying cameras and scientific instruments intended to photograph the lunar surface and transmit data following impact. Although the Atlas-Agena B launch was successful, a failure in the spacecraft’s power system caused its batteries to drain after about eight hours. Ranger 5 subsequently missed the Moon by approximately 450 miles and entered heliocentric orbit, ending another unsuccessful attempt in the early U.S. lunar exploration program. Interestingly, Ranger 5 was not completely scientifically useless: before its power was lost, it transmitted approximately four hours of data from its gamma-ray experiment.
