 Recently, I went on a tour of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and it was incredible. If any of you guys have a chance to go, I strongly recommend doing it. It's awesome. But there isn't one odd thing on the tour. Peanuts. When you go into this control room that many of us are familiar with because this was the room they showed on TV, when Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, they offer you peanuts. In fact, in some of these images, you might see people eating peanuts. They even have the cardboard cutout of NASA's Mohawk guy, Bobak Ferdowsi, with the actual bottle of peanuts from 2012. In glass, it's a little bit weird. Well, the peanut tradition may have gained attention in 2012, but it's actually far older and dates back to our first ever missions to the moon. Just like America's activities in space, JPL's contributions to the space age predate NASA. This is the center that built the Explore One satellite, the first satellite that America successfully launched in 1958. It was in 1959 that JPL was folded into the relatively new National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Like every NACA center that also became part of NASA around the same time, JPL had its specialty. In this case, the specialty was robotic missions and satellites. And so it made sense that when NASA was starting to look at probes launched to other planets and satellites, it turned to JPL to sort of spearhead those programs. And of course, one of the earliest targets NASA had was the moon, but this wasn't Apollo. Before sending humans to the moon, NASA had to figure out what exactly was going on with our satellite, and so it launched a series of robotic missions to start gaining a little bit more up close data about the moon. The very first round of lunar exploration missions was called Ranger. The Ranger program was a series of very simple satellites just to gather some data about the moon's environment. Later missions might have cameras or might impact the moon, but for the moment, the important part was just getting there and getting any kind of data in the process. The rocket would be an atlas rocket with an Agena upper stage. The atlas would get it into orbit and then the Agena would send it off to the moon. Ranger One launched at 6.04 in the morning on August 23rd, 1961. Similarly, telemetry told engineers that the Agena had actually failed and the spacecraft was stuck in near-Earth orbit. The silver lining was that the spacecraft was working perfectly, so at least part of the mission was successful, even if it wasn't doing its successful mission at its target. Ranger Two followed a little too closely in Ranger One's footsteps on November 18th. Slightly before 4 o'clock in the morning and just over half an hour after launch, telemetry showed that the Agena's second burn had failed, leaving Ranger Two also in Earth orbit. But this time around, they didn't even have the silver lining of the spacecraft working perfectly. It seems there were so many problems with every aspect of the Ranger program, but it didn't matter. We were only two missions in and so engineers got a bit more ambitious. Ranger Three was designed not only to impact the moon, it would have a camera on board so it could take and send back pictures of the moon's surface right before smashing into it. But again, problems dogged the flight almost immediately. After it launched at 3.30 in the afternoon on January 26th, 1962, the Atlas's engine burned longer than expected, putting the spacecraft on a track to pass ahead of and below the moon rather than impacting the surface. The error was too big to correct, and though engineers tried to turn the spacecraft around to get a picture of the moon's far side, all they got back were pictures of empty space. With three consecutive failures under its belt, the Ranger program was starting to get a lot of negative attention, both from inside NASA and outside through the media. People were questioning whether JPL had any ability to get to the moon at all, whether it was possible. And inside NASA, people were questioning management of the Ranger program. The pressure was on to have a successful flight, or at least to have something work well finally. Ranger Four had a great launch at 3.50 on the afternoon of April 23rd, 1962. Both the Atlas and the Agena performed well, but the spacecraft's signal fluctuated as it flew to the moon. Engineers realized that the spacecraft was tumbling, and though it did hit the moon right on target, it was dead when it did. Ranger Five also had a beautiful launch through overcast skies on October 18th, just before 1pm. Both the Atlas and Agena again worked perfectly, sending the spacecraft on a trajectory towards the moon, but then the data started coming back garbled. Ranger Five had somehow switched to battery power, and it wasn't long before the batteries were dead. The spacecraft tumbled along, dead, towards the moon. This fifth consecutive failure was the first nail in the coffin of the Ranger program. The last four missions were canceled, and the three remaining missions, Ranger Six through Nine, were downgraded to photo-only missions. Nothing else mattered. Just get to the moon and take a picture of it and send it back before it smashes into the surface. Ranger Six launched towards the Sea of Tranquility at 10.49 in the morning on Thursday, January 30th, 1964. Both the Atlas and Agena performed flawlessly, and a mid-course correction trimmed the flight and put Ranger Six on the perfect course to its target. Everything looked great on this mission, but there was one flaw. The camera wasn't working properly. As Ranger Six neared the moon, the signal was so weak, engineers could not get a picture back. The mission had been flawless, but it had failed in its main objective. Six failures later, and morale was at an all-time low. There was talk of shutting down JPL. People were saying that a university-run center had no business being in the space game at all. There was even talk of sabotage. People were convinced that there was no way so many missions could be going this wrong. Someone had to have been sabotaging some element of every rocket or every spacecraft system. Something had to be responsible for this. There was talk of replacing all Ranger management, taking out everyone who had apparently been making all the wrong decisions and bringing in new people to maybe save JPL and the Ranger program. It was through this bleak atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty that Ranger Seven launched on July 28th of 1964, but something was different that day. Mission manager, Harrester Meyer, handed out peanuts that morning to ease tensions. He figured that chewing on peanuts or playing with them on the table would give his team something else to focus on. Shortly after launch, telemetry told JPL that the spacecraft was perfectly headed on track to its target on the Sea of Clouds. Consensus at JPL was that the mission had a 50-50 shot of success. The next morning, mission scientists sent a command for the midcourse correction and its perfect execution convinced engineers that now Ranger Seven had about an 80% chance of succeeding. By 6 o'clock in the morning on Friday, July 31st, the viewing gallery in the Space Flight Operations Facility was packed. Visitors sat behind flight controllers who watched the telemetry coming back from Ranger Seven. 20 minutes before impact, they got a signal that the cameras were on and starting to warm up. 90 seconds later, a strong signal came back from all six cameras on board. At 6.25 in the morning, Ranger Telemetry stopped. The spacecraft had impacted the surface, but before it had, it had sent back a series of stunning images. Applause and cheers replaced the quiet tension that had permeated the visitors' gallery, as they realized that NASA and the nation had captured the first ever close-up pictures of the moon's surface. Ranger Seven's success had nothing to do with peanuts, but it's become a tradition nonetheless. Now there are peanuts at JPL for every major mission event, a launch, a landing, or even an orbit insertion burn. And if you visit JPL, you get to try the JPL peanuts for yourself. I also want to remind you guys that you can now sponsor Vintage Space and help make the episodes that you love possible. There's a video right up here about how that works. And of course, if you love old-timey space things, be sure to subscribe to my channel so you never miss one of my bi-weekly episodes. So do you have more questions about going to the moon, the Ranger program, or peanuts? Let me know all of your thoughts, questions, and comments in the comment section below. And of course, you can also find me all across social media. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and on Instagram. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you next time.