The national program for lunar and planetary exploration

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has assigned to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory the responsibility for design and development of spacecraft for the exploration of the moon, the planets, and interplanetary space. In carrying out its assignment, JPL, the United States' oldest guided‐missile and rocket‐research laboratory, is designing and fabricating spacecraft to be flown past the moon and to land scientific equipment on the surface of the moon. Designs have also begun for spacecraft to fly past the planets and land capsules of scientific instruments on the planetary surfaces. This paper describes the Ranger spacecraft, now undergoing assembly, which will initiate the lunar exploration program; the Mariner, now being designed, which will initiate the planetary program with a flight past Venus; and the Surveyor, in which packages of scientific instruments will be soft‐landed on the moon.