It was really hard to get the early spacecraft to not spin uncontrollably, so even short exposures look blurry.
Yes, a bit of a letdown but it was 7 years before the next 3, and shortly after Vanguard 2, the first SSTV scanner camera in space, which failed to align to its target latitude of 40°N to 50°N so I couldn’t find any images - presumably only incoherent lines of image data were received that could not be assembled into a 2D image.
It was really hard to get the early spacecraft to not spin uncontrollably, so even short exposures look blurry.
Yes, a bit of a letdown but it was 7 years before the next 3, and shortly after Vanguard 2, the first SSTV scanner camera in space, which failed to align to its target latitude of 40°N to 50°N so I couldn’t find any images - presumably only incoherent lines of image data were received that could not be assembled into a 2D image.