With the return of a flight to the moon to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) roadmap, it seems only fitting that a piece of lunar history is also returning, as astronomers managed to find the long-lost "Snoopy" module of the Apollo 10 mission.
This module, named after the cartoon dog Snoopy, was used by the agency during the Apollo 10 mission, the purpose of which was to carry out all the operations necessary to land a man on the moon, with the exception of the final stage. Without the Apollo 10 mission, there would have been no success for the Apollo 11 lunar mission.
Astronauts Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan approached the Earth satellite on this manned module to a distance of about 50 feet (15,2 km). This was to be the last test of the module's equipment, ending at the point at which the powered descent to the Moon was to begin. Stafford and Cernan then returned to the Charlie Brown command module, where third astronaut John Young was waiting for them, after which the spacecraft departed for Earth, leaving Snoopy in orbit.
NASA had no plans to continue using Snoopy and soon stopped tracking its movement. However, in 2011, a team of astronomers led by Nick Howes, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, decided to find out where Snoopy is now. At that time, the group estimated the odds of success were 1 in 235 million.
All the more impressive is the announcement by astronomers that they have found a lost lunar module. Howes and the team say they are "98% confident" that the module has been found, Sky News reports.
“Until we collect radar data,” Howes noted on Twitter, “no one will know for sure ... although it looks promising.”
Source: 3dnews.ru