Nick Howes and Faulkes Telescope Project Seek Lost Apollo 10 LM Snoopy

Summary: Royal Astronomical Society Fellow Nick Howes and Faulkes Telescope Project seek lost Apollo 10 LM Snoopy, jettisoned into solar orbit May 23, 1969.

Faulkes Telescope North (FTN), viewed inside close housing; Haleakalā Observatory, East Maui; Aug. 30, 2010: Mike Falarski, Public Domain (CC0 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Royal Astronomical Society Fellow Nick Howes and Faulkes Telescope Project seek lost Apollo 10 LM Snoopy, separated above Earth’s moon from the mission’s command module and sent into a solar orbit Friday, May 23, 1969.

Faulkes Telescope Project (FTP) operates as an education partner of Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGTN), a California-headquartered global network of astronomical observatories. Faulkes Telescope Project website expresses the project’s mission as encouraging “research-based science education” by providing free access, for teachers and students, to the project’s and partners’ resources.

Faulkes Telescope Project’s twin 2-meter-aperture telescopes have complementary locations in Earth’s Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Faulkes Telescope North is located at Haleakalā Observatory, also known as Haleakalā High Altitude Observatory Site, on Hawaii’s East Maui Volcano. Faulkes Telescope South is sited at Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory on Mount Woorat, also known as Siding Spring Mountain, in Warrumbungle National Park, near Coonabarabran, New South Wales.

Founder and editor of online space history website collectSPACE Robert Zane Pearlman (born Jan. 14, 1976) notes the significance of Howes and Faulkes Telescope Project’s search in his Sept. 20, 2011, post on Space.com, the online space history website that he founded in 1999. Apollo 10 Lunar Module Snoopy is “the only U.S. once-manned spacecraft” that still roams outer space.

The Apollo 10 mission’s Command Module Charlie Brown separated from Lunar Module Snoopy Friday, May 23, 1969, at 05:13:36 Greenwich Mean Time/Coordinated Universal Time (12:13 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 1:13 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time; 108:24:36 Ground Elapsed Time since liftoff). The lunar module’s ascent propulsion system’s (APS) 249.0-second firing, beginning at 05:41:05 GMT/UTC (12:41 a.m. EST, 1:41 a.m. EDT; 108:52:05.5 GET), placed Snoopy into a solar orbit. Snoopy’s descent stage had been placed into lunar orbit, for eventual lunar impact, after separation from the ascent stage Thursday, May 22, at 23:34:16 GMT/UTC (6:34 p.m. EST, 7:34 p.m. EDT; 102:45:16.9 GET).

The lunar modules for Apollo missions 11, 12 and 14 through 17 all had lunar impact sites. “Lost Moon” mission Apollo 13’s Lunar Module Aquarius was intentionally allowed to burn up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Paul Roche, Faulkes Telescope Project director and head of astronomy at the University of Glamorgan in the United Kingdom’s South Wales region, references 35th U.S. President John “Jack” Fitzgerald Kennedy’s (May 29, 1917-Nov. 22, 1963) in his description of the daunting search, according to Pearlman’s collectSPACE post. In his Sept. 12, 1962, speech at Rice University football stadium in Houston, Texas, President Kennedy attributed the impetus for undertaking such ventures as going to the moon as “. . . not because they are easy, but because they are hard . . .”

Nick Howes specifies the search’s “key problem” as “a lack of solid orbital data since 1969” in United Kingdom astronomer and Meteorwatch blog creator Adrian West’s (moniker: VirtualAstro) Sept. 19, 2011, Universe Today article, “The Mission to Find the Missing Lunar Module.” Howes envisions a huge search arc encompassing up to 135 million kilometers of space.

FTP Director Paul Roche identifies data sources for extrapolating Snoopy’s trajectory as Remanzacco Observatory in northeastern Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and the Jamesburg Earth Station (JES) in Central Coastal California’s small, rural Carmel Valley community of Cachagua. The Jamesburg Earth Station’s construction began in October 1967 and was quickly completed for opening Dec. 1, 1968, to ensure the 97-foot antenna dish’s support for Project Apollo. Also, the project has consulted with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and with former Mission Control flight controllers.

Both Nick Howes and Faulkes’ education director Sarah Roberts consider the lengthy search, even if unsuccessful in finding Snoopy, as useful. They mention the bonus possibility of discovering new asteroids and comets during the project’s search for Snoopy.

The takeaways for Royal Astronomical Society Fellow Nick Howes and Faulkes Telescope Project’s search for Apollo 10 LM Snoopy are that Snoopy has been orbiting the sun for 42 years and that the search area possibly covers 135 million kilometers of space.

artist's concept of lunar module jettison by Apollo command-service module; NASA ID S66-10987; created Dec. 1, 1965: Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Digital Library

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Faulkes Telescope North (FTN), viewed inside close housing; Haleakalā Observatory, East Maui; Aug. 30, 2010: Mike Falarski, Public Domain (CC0 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LCOGT_2m.JPG

artist's concept of lunar module jettison by Apollo command-service module; NASA ID S66-10987; created Dec. 1, 1965: Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Digital Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details-s66-10987

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