Lunar Orbiter 1 due to stray sunlight) and overheating during its cruise to the Moon. The star tracker problem was resolved by navigating using the Moon as a reference, and the overheating was abated by orienting the spacecraft 36 degrees off-Sun to lower the temperature. Lunar Orbiter 1 was injected into an elliptical near-equatorial lunar orbit 92.1 hours after launch. The initial orbit was and had a period of 3 hours 37 minutes and an inclination of 12.2 degrees. On August 21, perilune was dropped to and on August 25 to . The spacecraft acquired photographic data from August 18 to 29, 1966,
Lunar month the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, and the "descending node", where the Moon moves into the Southern. The draconic or nodical month is the average interval between two successive transits of the Moon through the same node. Because of the torque exerted by the Sun's gravity on the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, the plane of the Moon's orbit gradually rotates westward, which means the nodes gradually rotate around Earth. As a result, the time it takes the Moon to return to the same node is shorter than a sidereal month, lasting days (27 d 5 h 5 min 35.8 s).