I knew wire service photographs had been done. I read Homer_J_Simpson’s WW2 threads. To me, that was the easy part. The hard part of the lunar orbiters was the onboard remote development and handling of the film in a small spacecraft in the harsh environment of space a quarter of a million miles away from the closest human being. And each orbiter ran over a hundred photos.
At a time when success or failure of a space probe leaving earth orbit was fairly chancy, all five Lunar Orbiters functioned perfectly without any major malfunctions. The Lunar Orbiter program was an unknown triumph.
It definitely was, must have been pretty narrow film, too, those probes weren’t that big. That’s probably an example of NASA spending resulting in technology used on Earth, like pens that write upside down and Tang. ;’)