Lunar Orbiter Solar Panel

Look at all those solar cells, back when silicon wafers were just 1″ diameter (1960-1969). Power of 375 W was provided by the four solar arrays containing 10,856 n/p solar cells which would directly run the spacecraft. Spectrolab made 8%-efficient cells back then.

The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five unmanned lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon’s surface,[1] they provided the first photographs from lunar orbit and photographed both the Moon and Earth.

All five missions were successful, and 99 percent of the lunar surface was mapped from photographs taken with a resolution of 60 meters (200 ft) or better.

The Lunar Orbiters had an ingenious imaging system, which consisted of a dual-lens camera, a film processing unit, a readout scanner, and a film handling apparatus. The film was moved during exposure to compensate for the spacecraft velocity, which was estimated by an electro-optical sensor. The 70mm film was then processed, scanned, and the images transmitted back to Earth.

During the Lunar Orbiter missions, the first pictures of Earth as a whole were taken, beginning with Earth-rise over the lunar surface by Lunar Orbiter 1 in August, 1966. The first full picture of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 8 August 1967.

The Lunar Orbiter orbital photographs were transmitted to Earth as analog data after onboard scanning of the original film into a series of strips. The data were written to magnetic tape and also to film. The film data were used to create hand-made mosaics of Lunar Orbiter frames. For many years these images have been the basis of much of lunar scientific research.

The Lunar Orbiters were all eventually commanded to crash on the Moon before their attitude control fuel ran out so they would not present navigational or communications hazards to later Apollo flights. (wikipedia