On This Date: Apollo 10

Apollo 10 launched on May 18, 1969, from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center. That was the only Saturn V rocket to launch from LC-39B.

Anna & Gene Cernan!

The crew–Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan–had all flown to space before and would all travel to space again in subsequent missions. Stafford flew on the Apollo-Soyuz project in 1975, Young commanded Apollo 16 and the first space shuttle mission, and Cernan goes down in history as the last person to have his boots on the Moon as part of Apollo 17.

Apollo 10 was the first spacecraft to broadcast live video in color.

The Command Module and Lunar Module were named for for Peanuts characters, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, respectively. Snoopy, with Stafford and Young aboard, tested the Lunar Module by descending to toward the Moon’s surface without getting close enough to land. Cernan himself later wrote that the lander was too heavy to land and guarantee ascent back to the Command Module, and the lore is that NASA left it short of fuel so that the astronauts wouldn’t be tempted to land. Snoopy was left adrift after Stafford and Young were back in the Command Module, and the Lunar Module eventually crashed into the Moon.

While it has never been secret, recently, Apollo 10 hit the news when a documentary supposedly revealed what the astronauts called “whistling” and “outer-space-type music.” It sounds to us like a high-pitched vacuum cleaner running in the background or the sort of radio interference one might encounter on Earth if one is listening to AM radio. Read more and watch the video at Space.com HERE. What we appreciate more about this audio and that of Apollo 16 is that John Young calls his crewmates “babe.”