Mission
The spacecraft was launched into a low Earth parking orbit, but an inoperative roll gyro prevented Agena restart. The spacecraft could not be put into its planned deep space trajectory, resulting in Ranger 2 being stranded in low Earth orbit upon separation from the Agena stage. The orbit decayed and the spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere on November 20, 1961.
Read more about this topic: Ranger 2
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”
—William McKinley (1843–1901)
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)