White paint, gold and chrome plating, and a silvered plastic sheet encasing the retrorocket furnished thermal control.

[4] During prelaunch preparations for Ranger 1, the spacecraft's timer had accidentally been started which led to the deployment of the solar panels inside the payload shroud.

It was decided that ground testing of the onboard instruments would not be done on the Block II spacecraft because they had a functional midcourse correction engine and if a similar incident happened with them, the squibs and pyrotechnics used to deploy the solar panels could inadvertently ignite the propellants in the onboard engine, which could result in the explosion of the spacecraft on the pad and possibly take the entire launch vehicle with it.

The experimental apparatus included: (1) a vidicon television camera, which employed a scan mechanism that yielded one complete frame in 10 s; (2) a gamma-ray spectrometer mounted on a 1.8 m boom; (3) a radar altimeter; and (4) a seismometer to be rough-landed on the lunar surface.

The Block II Ranger spacecraft carried a TV camera that used an optical telescope that would allow imaging down to about 24 kilometers above the lunar surface during the descent.

[6] Reversed command signals caused the spacecraft to pitch in the wrong direction and the TM antenna to lose earth acquisition, and mid-course correction was not possible.

Agena was primarily the domain of the U.S. Air Force, who intended to use it for military payloads, and NASA had originally assumed it would begin flying in late 1960 or early 1961 by which time any developmental issues with the stage could be weeded out.

However, Agena B ended up taking longer to put into service than originally anticipated and its performance also turned out to be somewhat less than expected, which forced some of the planned experiments on the Block II Rangers to be cancelled.

While the Thor-Agena B had begun flying in October 1960, the Atlas-Agena B did not make its maiden voyage until July 1961, meaning that Ranger 1 was only the second time this launch vehicle combination had been flown.

Major General Osmond J. Ritland, Commander of the Air Force Space Systems Division in Inglewood, California, promised NASA that all problems with Agena would be corrected and, because they also affected DoD programs, the issue was being taken "quite seriously".

On January 18, 1962, Ranger 3 was stacked atop the booster, but the following day attempted fueling of the Atlas went awry when a tear was found in the intermediate bulkhead separating the LOX and RP-1 tanks.

Sporadic tracking of the probe continued until January 31 when the attitude control thrusters exhausted their propellant supply, at which point the mission was officially terminated.