When Apollo 10 Almost Hit Into The Moon

Almost four days and six hours, on May 22, 1969, after leaving Earth, the Apollo 10 crew was enjoying a delightfully uneventful mission. Rather, it was as uncomplicated as a mission to the moon could be.

Commander Tom Stafford and the lunar module pilot Gene Cernan had just returned from their near passage across the lunar surface and were ready to go through the staging maneuver that would take them to the correct lunar orbit to rejoin the pilot of the module, John Young command waiting for Service Module. In time, the LM's ascent engine ignited.

Then hell broke loose. The crew saw the lunar horizon pass through their window half a dozen times when Cernan shouted, "Son of a bitch!" The lunar module of Apollo 10, with two astronauts on board, was getting out of control a quarter of a million miles from home.

Apollo 10 was a complete essay for Apollo 11

Apollo 10 marked the last step of NASA before going for the full lunar landing with Apollo 11. Up to that point, the space agency's approach to landing on the Moon had been incremental. Apollo 7 tested the command service module (CSM) in Earth orbit in October 1968. Two months later, Apollo 8 took that same spacecraft for a test flight to the moon, ensuring it could enter and exit the orbit lunar without any problem In March 1969, Apollo 9 was the first to take the entire stack of Apollo for a test drive, flying both the CSM and the lunar module (LM) in a simulated mission of lunar landing in relative safety of Earth's orbit.

The mission plan of Apollo 10 was, in effect, a general rehearsal of a lunar landing that would stop just before the surface. This would give NASA final control that the CSM and LM could properly fly in lunar orbit. The lunar lander, later nicknamed Snoopy, would descend almost to the moon's surface and then reattach and reattach with the command module.

There were some concerns that the irregular gravitational environment around the moon coming from mass concentrations, the so-called masscons, would discard the trajectories of the spacecraft. It would also be a test of the communication systems, both between the two spacecraft as well as the spacecraft and the Earth, at lunar distances. And it would give NASA the opportunity to take close-up images of the proposed landing site for Apollo 11.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.history.com/news/apollo-10-disaster-apollo-11-practice-run