Astronomers believe they have found the famous lunar module from the Apollo 10 mission five decades after it was released into space by the crew. Tom Stafford, a member of the Apollo 10 crew in the 1969 mission, said: “We don’t have any idea where he went. He just went boom and it disappeared right into the sun.” The module , measuring four metres wide, was nicknamed Snoopy and was believed to have ben lost forever.
But now, Nick Howes, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, told The Times they believe they have found it and that all they need is someone to retrieve it.
He said: “The approximate distance it travels in its orbit is 940 million kilometers. When you are looking for something four meters wide and the last reliable data you’ve got on it is 50 years ago, it’s a bit tricky.”
He said astronomers found an “odd” object thanks to radar data.
He added: “It was a strange anomalous object in approximately the right orbit and exactly the right size.
“The radar data was completely whack, as one astronomer put it. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen.
“We’re 99 percent convinced we’ve got it.”
He said someone with space expertise such as SpaceX boss Elon Musk would be a candidate to bring the object back to Earth.
He said: “To recover one lunar module that is intact would be, I feel, quite special. The quality of engineering that went in to the Apollo program would probably mean that if power was restored you may even be able to fire up some of the systems.
“What I’m hoping is someone like Elon Musk can develop something and capture it and bring it back down.”
Additional craft used during the mission were either fired into the moon for experimental reasons or left to burn up into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Snoopy, named after the lovable cartoon dog, was instead used as a practice run for Apollo 11 lunar landing, to take place two months Apollo 10 in July 1969.
Astronauts transferred into the module as it drifted nine miles above the moon’s surface and moved it into command mode to make the mission a success. But Snoopy was left to drift in space forever as a result due there being no realistic way of tracking it.