Space Junk

Geoff Chester (NASEP007@sivm.si.edu)
Thu, 30 Nov 95 09:07:26 EST

In response to a message from Kenny Skidmore regarding Apollo "junk":

Most of the Apollo hardware is either on the Moon or in solar orbit.  On
all of the lunar missions the S-IVB stage was sent into solar orbit or
(beginning with Apollo 13) deliberately crashed into the lunar surface.
Similarly, the Lunar Module ascent stages were deliberately crashed on the
Moon, except for "Eagle", the Apollo 11 LM ascent stage. It is still in lunar
orbit.  On all returning lunar flights, the Service Module, which was jetti-
soned just before atmospheric entry, burned up in the atmosphere.  On Apollo
13, the damaged SM as well as the LM "Lifeboat" entered the atmosphere and
burned up.

I believe that the S-IVB stage of Apollo 7 was in LEO for a time, but it has
decayed.  To my knowledge the only piece of Apollo hardware that might still
be within visual range is the ascent stage of the LM from Apollo 9, which was
the first flight of an LM, done in LEO just in case something bunged up.

A couple of years ago a very small (on the cosmic scale...) "asteroid" passed
by the earth at a distance of a bit over half that of the Moon. Since it had
an inclination of less than half a degree to the ecliptic and matched the
estimated brightness profile of a 20 X 10 meter white cylinder, there is some
speculation that we may have had a rendezvous with a solar-orbiting S-IVB. I
did a casual investigation of this event and concluded that the best candidates
were the S-IVB's of either Apollo 9 or 12...but the elements are pretty
sketchy.....

TTFN
Geoff

+=====================================================================+
3 Geoff Chester    Albert Einstein Planetarium   nasep007@sivm.si.edu 3
3=====================================================================3
3            "I have to get dressed to go out of my mind"             3
3                -- Adrian Belew                                      3
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