Failed · Failure
A United States lunar orbiter attempt lost when the payload shroud failed about three quarters of a minute into flight.
- Destinations
- Launch vehicle
- Atlas-Able
- Launch site
- Cape Canaveral, United States
- Countries
- United States
- Mission types
- Orbiter
Chronology
Mission timeline
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Pioneer P-3 · Spacecraft
Destinations: Moon
Trajectory record
Trajectory dataset not yet available
Known dates and encounters do not uniquely determine a flight path. This mission’s sourced timeline is available above; no verified trajectory is currently published here.
What is needed to reconstruct this path?
- A frame-qualified position and vector velocity at an epoch, or equivalent complete orbital elements.
- Finer event-time constraints where required by an orbital reconstruction; the stored day/month/year precision is retained.
- The actual failed-flight state history. Intended destinations are not evidence that the spacecraft reached them.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through October 12, 2026
- Pioneer P-3 - NASA NSSDCA Spacecraft Details — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Glaser and Spangler: The Able-5 Lunar Satellite, original STL report — OTHERTechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- Pioneer P 3: current NSSDCA flight and hardware description — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary Probes 1958–2000, NASA/SP-2002-4524 — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- DE421 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFTechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- DE440 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- IAU rotational elements and body radii (PCK 00011) — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA global lunar height maps, LDEM_4 V3 original PDS source label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA 2023 south-polar elevation, uncertainty and effective-resolution maps — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Seen From Above: LROC site and terrain context — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Moon Facts — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context
- SLDEM2015 Blue Ghost region: original PDS elevation-grid label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- JPL Solar System Dynamics Astrodynamic Parameters — JPLOther · Supports: destination/body context
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context