Astronomers believe they have located Apollo 10 lunar module

At just four meters wide, it was always going to be a long shot but Nick Howes, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, along with legendary flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program, have spent a number of years in a calculated hunt for the probe.

The team now believe that they may have found it and according to The Times all they need is someone with the expertise to go and retrieve it.

Has the Apollo 10 lunar module finally been found? Astronomers believe they have located NASA's probe left orbiting the Moon 50 years ago - and now they want to bring it back to Earth

The lunar module named Snoopy was left in orbit around the moon 50 years ago. I don't believe it can be recovered and brought back to Earth anytime in the near future.

Snoopy went out of control during manned testing in lunar orbit. It was the first time it was flown in lunar orbit by astronauts and could have been a disaster. If it had crashed I doubt Apollo 11 would of landed on the moon 2 months later.

The video below shows actual footage and has the voice commutations of the incident as it happened.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

If it had crashed I doubt Apollo 11 would of landed on the moon 2 months later.

Perhaps, if the problem was not known or had something to do with systems. It was a failure to follow the checklist. But the end of the decade was fast approaching.

Analysis revealed that the cause of the anomalous motion was human error. Inadvertently, the control mode of the LM abort guidance system was returned to AUTO rather than being left in the ATTITUDE HOLD mode for staging. In AUTO, the abort guidance system drove the LM to acquire the CSM which was not in accordance with the planned attitude timeline. The commander took over manual control to reestablish the proper attitude.

history.nasa.gov...

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Cool! I love it when the incident first happens- you hear "son of a bitch." 😂

How far away is the surface of the moon in this video, and how much of it goes by as we watch?

a reply to: KansasGirl

The lowest orbit level reached was 7.8 nautical miles. The problem occurred on the return, at about 31 miles above the lunar surface.

At 102:44:49, during preparations for rendezvous with the CSM, the LM started to wallow off slowly in yaw, and then stopped. At 102:45:12, it started a rapid roll accompanied by small pitch and yaw rates. The ascent stage was then separated from the descent stage at 102:45:16.9 at an altitude of 31.4 n mi and the motion was stopped eight seconds later. A 15.55-second firing of the ascent engine at 102:55:02.13 placed the ascent stage into an orbit of 46.5 by 11.0 n mi. The descent stage went into lunar orbit.

history.nasa.gov...

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Subsequent lunar modules starting with Apollo 12 (Apollo 13 module burned up in earth atmosphere after acting as "lifeboat") were crashed into moon after crew re docked with command module - this was to create artificial
"Moonquakes" to study moon internal structure using seismograph left on moon

The spent third stage of the Saturn V was also crashed into moon for same reason

The spent stage from Apollo 12 missed the moon do to error dumping residual fuel and went into heliocentric orbit around sun (the spent stages from Apollo 8,9, 10, 11 are still in heliocentric orbits around sun)

It returns to vicinity of earth early few years and is picked up by telescopes

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
I don't believe it can be recovered and brought back to Earth anytime in the near future.

All we need is a little "space tug" to reach it and bring it into LEO, where it could be studied. We get to remote asteroids/comets and bring samples back to earth, so this kind of mission shouldn't be too hard, I think.

a reply to: wildespace

Some day. When it wouldn't be so costly. Perhaps. But not as much to be learned as with other objects in space.

Can’t discover a made to find black box on earth... doubtful they can do it in space...

Anyone have access to 'The Times' original article?

www.thetimes.co.uk...

The astronomer who makes the claim is not very complimentary about the Daily Fail's re-hash of the story

twitter.com...

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo

What's brightened up my day is reading the 429 comments about the Daily mail article, 95% of which are written by idiots of the highest order. Conspiracy theorists being just the tip of the Mail readership moronic iceberg

As said... I have no, nor would ever speak to that hate filled toilet roll, the Daily Mail. I gave an interview to the Times, who published an accurate story. The Mail, at 2am, decided to STEAL it from the Times website, and reword it, with their usual utter lack of facts

Ouch !

Can't say I disagree with him though.

a reply to: gortex

"Hate filled toilet roll"

There's a brief quote from the Times article here:

www.collectspace.com...

It was a very 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

Essentially they've found something in roughly the right sort of place with the right sort of radar return signal for an object of that size and construction. The problem is getting to it!