WITH NSS CHAPTERS

The year 2019 saw the 50th anniversaries of three lunar missions (Apollo 10, Apollo 11, and Apollo 12), so the NSS asked its chapters to celebrate these landmark events. In addition to various individual chapter commemorations of Apollo 11, Joseph Bland (Chapters Assembly Chair) and the Sacramento L5 chapter (SAC5) hosted web-based events for all three missions in cooperation with the Chapters Assembly. Participants shared their memories and the impact that Apollo had on their lives.

APOLLO 10–DRESS REHEARSAL FOR LUNAR LANDING: MAY 18–26, 1969

Apollo 10 mission patch.

Credit: NASA

Apollo 10 was the first flight of a complete, crewed Apollo spacecraft to operate in lunar orbit. To test NASA’s plans for a lunar landing, Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan entered the Lunar Module (LM) and undocked from the Command Module. They flew a brief stationkeeping orbit and simulated a lunar landing by firing the LM’s descent engine, staging, then firing the ascent engine and docking with the Command Module. In between, the astronauts raised and lowered the LM’s orbit, tested the landing radar, and flew over Landing Site Two in the Sea of Tranquility. When they jettisoned the descent stage, an incorrect switch setting (later attributed to an error in a flightplan checklist) resulted in uncontrollable gyrations of the ascent stage, but the two corrected the spin quickly and headed back to orbit. Apollo 10 was on the back side of the Moon when John Young restarted the Command Module’s engine for the trans-Earth injection, and flight controllers nearly turned blue while waiting to hear that the maneuver was successful. Days later, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean within visual range of its primary recovery ship, the U.S.S. Princeton.