Goals: Following Lunar Orbiter 1's scouting of potential Apollo landing sites in the Moon's southern equatorial region, Lunar Orbiter 2 was to photograph 30 potential landing sites in the northern equatorial area, as well as take various measurements of the Moon and its environment.

Accomplishments: Lunar Orbiter 2 transmitted 211 pictures, covering nearly four million square kilometers of both the near and far sides of the Moon. They included a shot looking across Copernicus crater from an altitude of only 45 km that vividly conveyed the three-dimensional nature of the lunar surface, an image that newspapers hailed as "the picture of the century." Following the main imaging mission, the spacecraft changed its orbital plane to enable scientists to see how its orbit would respond to variations in the Moon's gravitational field over a wider swath.