Lunar Orbiter

The NASA Lunar Orbiter (LO) program was a series of 5 unmanned orbiter missions launched by the United States in 1966 through 1967 to study and map the lunar surface prior to the Apollo program landings. All five LO missions were successful, and 99% of the Moon was photographed with a resolution of 60 m or better. The first three missions were focused on imaging 20 potential landing sites for Apollo astronauts. Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed the entire near side and 95% of the far side, and Lunar Orbiter 5 completed far-side coverage and acquired medium (20 m) and high (2 m) resolution images of 36 pre-selected areas.

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