London Science Museum Displays Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown

Summary: The United Kingdom’s London Science Museum displays Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown as a loan from the Smithsonian Institution.

Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown Pilot John Young displays drawing of the command module’s namesake, Peanuts character Charlie Brown; color reproduction from fourth telecast, made by Apollo 10 spacecraft’s color television camera, at a distance of approximately 112,000 nautical miles from Earth; NASA image S69-34075: Generally not subject to copyright in the United States, via NASA Image and Digital Library

The United Kingdom’s London Science Museum displays Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown in the museum’s Making the Modern World Gallery, located on Level 0 (ground floor).

Apollo 10 launched Sunday, May 18, 1969, from central Florida’s John F. Kennedy Space Center at 16:49:00 Greenwich Mean Time/Coordinated Universal Time (11:49 p.m. Eastern Standard Time; 12:49 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). Liftoff marked the first mission launch at Launch Pad 39B.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Apollo 10 Press Kit, released Wednesday, May 7, 1969, had described the mission’s three astronauts as “recycled from the Apollo 7 backup crew” (page 3). Commander Thomas Patten Stafford (born Sept. 17, 1930), Command Module Pilot (CMP) John Watts Young (born Sept. 24, 1930) and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Eugene Andrew Cernan (born March 14, 1934) also were veterans of NASA’s Gemini second human spaceflight program, Project Gemini (1961-1966).

North American Rockwell Corporation in Downey, California, was the contractor for the Apollo 10 Command and Service Module (CSM) 106. The cone-shaped command module (CM) measures a height of 11 feet 5 inches and a base diameter of 12 feet 10 inches, according to the Press Kit. The cylindrical-shaped service module (SM) had dimensions of 24 feet 7 inches in height and 12 feet 10 inches in diameter.

The Apollo 10 astronauts decided to give the call sign of Peanuts comic strip character Charlie Brown to the mission’s command module. Flight-dreaming beagle Snoopy, another Peanuts creation by American cartoonist Charles “Sparky” Monroe Schulz (Nov. 26, 1922-Feb. 12, 2000), was the namesake of the mission’s lunar module (LM).

Command and Service Module (CSM) 106 made 31 orbits of Earth’s moon between Wednesday, May 21, and Saturday, May 24. NASA’s Apollo 10 Mission Report, released August 1969, described Apollo 10 as “. . . an 8-day mission to qualify the combined spacecraft in the lunar environment” (3.0, page 3-1). The spacecraft’s lunar module executed four lunar orbits but, as a “dress rehearsal” for lunar landing mission Apollo 11, was excepted for “actual descent to the surface.”

Command Module Charlie Brown re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Monday, May 26, at 16:37:54 GMT/UTC (11:37 p.m. EST, 12:37 p.m. EDT; 191:48:54.5 GET). Splashdown occurred at 16:52:23 GMT/UTC (11:52 p.m. EST, 12:52 p.m. EDT; 192:03:23 GET).

The Apollo 10 astronauts boarded the recovery helicopter at 17:26 GMT/UTC (12:26 p.m. EST, 1:26 p.m. EDT; 192:37 GET) and recovery ship USS Princeton at 17:31 GMT/UTC (12:31 p.m. EST, 1:31 p.m. EDT; 192:42 GET). The USS Princeton retrieved Command Module Charlie Brown at 18:28 GMT/UTC (1:28 p.m. EST, 2:28 p.m. EDT; 193:39 GET).

The Princeton offloaded the command module on Saturday, May 31, at Pearl Harbor’s Ford Island in South O’ahu. Evaluation and deactivation procedures were conducted in Hawaii from May 31 to Tuesday, June 3. The command module arrived at North American Rockwell Wednesday, June 4, for postflight analysis.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum website credits NASA with transferring accountability for “Command Module, Apollo 10” to the Smithsonian Institution in April 1970. The transfer occurred prior to the artifact’s shipment to Europe for exhibition in a United States Information Agency-sponsored tour that included France, the Netherlands and the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The Apollo 10 command module was displayed in a 1972 exhibit, Research and Development USA, that traveled to Tbilisi, Moscow, Volgograd, Kazan, Donetsk and Leningrad, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2009 to 2017 archived content website.

The Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum website lists London’s Science Museum as Command Module Charlie Brown’s “public display” location, since placement on loan in 1978. The Science Museum received the command module in January 1976, after the artifact’s tour of Western Europe. The museum’s website identifies “Apollo 10 command module, call sign ‘Charlie Brown’” as object number 1976-106. The Science Museum is located on Exhibition Road in West London’s South Kensington district.

The takeaway for the London Science Museum’s public display of Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown is that the artifact has been on loan to the South Kensingston museum from the Smithsonian Institution since January 1976.

London's Science Museum, located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, exhibits Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown as collection object number 1976-106, on "public display" loan from the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum: Science Museum @sciencemuseumlondon, via Facebook May 18, 2014

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown Pilot John Young displays drawing of the command module’s namesake, Peanuts character Charlie Brown; color reproduction from fourth telecast, made by Apollo 10 spacecraft’s color television camera, at a distance of approximately 112,000 nautical miles from Earth; NASA image S69-34075: 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-S69-34075

London's Science Museum, located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, exhibits Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown as collection object number 1976-106, on "public display" loan from the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum: Science Museum @sciencemuseumlondon, via Facebook May 18, 2014, @ https://www.facebook.com/sciencemuseumlondon/photos/a.112170034675/10152864390649676/

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