ON BEHALF of the whole country, I want to congratulate you and those associated with you in NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and in the industrial laboratories. All of you have contributed the skills to make this Ranger VII flight the great success that it is. We are proud of the tremendous technical achievement which this successful flight represents.
This is a basic step forward in our orderly program to assemble the scientific knowledge necessary for man's trip to the moon.
The pictures obtained of the lunar surface should prove extremely useful. They will be a guide in constructing the lunar excursion module and in planning the trip. We shall now be able to better map out our descent route. We'll be able to build our lunar landing equipment with greater certainty and knowledge of the conditions which our astronauts will encounter on the moon.
I recognize that this great success has come only after a number of failures and partial failures in our efforts to send probes to the moon. This success should spur us on to added effort in the future.
The fact that our Soviet competitors have had many unpublicized failures to the moon and the planets also confirms the complexity of today's success.
On behalf of a grateful Nation let me again congratulate you on this magnificent achievement. All of you today have helped further the peaceful exploration of space.
Note: The President read this statement during a telephone conversation with Dr. William H. Pickering, Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Homer E. Newell, Associate Administrator for Space Science and Application, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President Upon the Successful Flight of Ranger VII. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238758