The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and injected into an elliptical near-equatorial lunar orbit for data acquisition after 92.6 hours' flight time.

A failure of the amplifier on the final day of readout, December 7, resulted in the loss of six photographs.

On December 8, 1966 the inclination was altered to 17.5 degrees to provide new data on lunar gravity.

A total of 609 high-resolution and 208 medium-resolution frames were returned, most of excellent quality with resolutions down to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in).

In 2011, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) was able to locate and image the precise impact point of the spacecraft.