As the Apollo 10 crew walks along a corridor on the way to Launch Complex 39B, mission commander Thomas P. Stafford pats the nose of Snoopy, the mission’s mascot, held by Jamye Flowers, astronaut Gordon Coopers’ secretary.
The Apollo 10 crew nicknamed the Lunar Module (LM) “Snoopy” and the Command/Service Module (CSM) “Charlie Brown” after characters in the Charles Schulz comic strip “Peanuts.”
Launched on May 18, 1969, the Apollo 10 mission was a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the lunar landing that occurred later that year.
The mission successfully completed the first manned CSM and LM docking and undocking operations in a lunar environment. Apollo 10 orbited the moon 31 times during its eight-day mission and took the LM to within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface, simulating a lunar landing.
After all these historic ‘firsts,’ the crew also sent the first live color television from space.Image Credit: NASA