Oklahoma Journeys

Week of May 17, 2009

40th Anniversary of Apollo 10

Download audio

This summer in July we’ll celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s first step on the moon. But this week, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NASA Apollo mission that made that possible, and the Oklahoman who commanded that Apollo 10 mission that orbited but did not land on the moon. That’s on Oklahoma Journeys from the Oklahoma History Center.

From the Oklahoma History Center, this is Oklahoma Journeys. I’m Michael Dean.

On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy delivered a special message to Congress asking for additional millions of dollars for NASA. In his speech he set the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely home. To understand how far reaching this goal was, the speech was delivered on May 25, 1961. It was almost a year later, on Feb. 20, 1962, that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. The congress came up with the money and NASA came up with the Apollo program. So we go from May 25, 1961, to eight years later, May 18, 1969, and the Apollo 10 mission. Tom Stafford was from Weatherford, Oklahoma, and was the commander of the mission. Interestingly, another Oklahoman, Gordon Cooper, was his backup on the number two crew. Eugene Cernan was the lunar module pilot, and John Young was the command module pilot. Just after noon May 18 the giant Saturn 4B rocket erupted and the Apollo 10 was on its way to the moon. The mission included everything necessary to complete the goal that President Kennedy had set; everything except actually landing on the moon.

The spacecraft was the second Apollo mission to orbit the Moon, and the first to travel to the Moon with the full Apollo spacecraft aboard consisting of the Command and Service Module, named the "Charlie Brown," and the Lunar Module, named "Snoopy." The mission was a full "dry run" for the Apollo 11 mission, in which all operations except the actual lunar landing were performed.

On May 22, Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan entered the Lunar Module and fired the Service Module reaction control thrusters to separate the Lunar Module from the Command Module. The Lunar Module was put into an orbit to allow low-altitude passes over the lunar surface, the closest bringing it to within 5and a half miles of the Moon. In addition to extensive photography of the lunar surface, from both the Lunar Module and Command Module, the first color television images were transmitted back to Earth from the moon from Apollo 10.

The afternoon of May 26, the Apollo 10 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa. The crew had been space for eight days traveling within five and a half miles of the moon, and that set the stage for Apollo 11 a month and a half later, the mission that we all remember when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the surface of the moon.

Tom Stafford’s first space flight was in December 1965 in the Gemini 6 and that capsule, his flight suit and other artifacts from Oklahomans in space are on display at the Oklahoma History Center, just east of the state capitol on NE 23rd Street in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma Journeys is a production of the Oklahoma History Center, dedicated to the collection, preservation and sharing of our state’s past. I’m Michael Dean.