Introduction:

This is a story about an outstanding project that is not well known to the public. It was initially conceived for the purpose of evaluating possible landing sites for the first Apollo moon landing. Once the project had met its goals, the project was all but forgotten.

There were 5 craft in all. The first three were placed in equitorial orbit to photograph possible landing sites. However, as they had done their job so well, the mission objectibves were changed and the final two were placed into a polar orbit in order to photo-map as much of the moon as possible.