Spacecraft of the Week #16

This weeks' honored spacecraft has traveled almost as much after its mission as during it. Apollo 9, nicknamed Gumdrop for its shape, was launched to low Earth orbit 41 years ago this week. During its stay in space, it rehearsed the upcoming lunar missions by docking to and extracting a Lunar Module, transferring crew, separating and going through the paces of a moon landing. After 10 days in orbit, it returned to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

After its return, it was sent to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas where engineers went over all parts of the spacecraft, checking and double checking to ensure craft and crew survivability of what was yet to come. After this inspection, it was placed on public display in the JSC Visitor Center.

Apollo 9 was later transferred to Jackson, Michigan and became the crown jewel of the collection at the Michigan Space and Science Center, located on the campus of Jackson Community College. While the collection was impressive, the center proved to costly and the college had to close it and remove the artifacts. Many of them, as well as curator Stewart Bailey, wound up at the Air Zoo in nearby Kalamazoo. Apollo 9 was a sweeter plum sought after by many. Since the spacecraft (as almost all flown spacecraft) is on loan from the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, they evaluated the requests and settled on San Diego.

The San Diego Air & Space Museum is located on the grounds of Balboa Park in the Ford Building, built as part of the California Pacific International Exposition, which was held in 1935 and 1936. There it was placed prominently in the entrance rotunda, sharing it's starring position with other aircraft manufactured in California (the Apollo spacecraft was built in Downey, California). The capsule is very accessible, forgoing the plexiglas cover seen on other Apollo capsules. It is displayed without it's hatch, which is sitting nearby.

So after 10 days in space and criss-crossing the US, Gumdrop finally rests about a 200 miles form where it was created. For that, and to celebrate its launch anniversary, Apollo 9 is this weeks' "Spacecraft of the Week'.

Name that Apollo!

I solicited images of the spacecraft displayed at JSC before Space Center Houston opened, and received several replies. Among them was Jonathan Ward description and pictures of his father's VIP visit to both JSC and KSC in June of 1969. Among his many pictures was this one of an Apollo spacecraft on display.

Ward writes, "Unfortunately, the number on the side of the vehicle is turned away from us, so I am not sure which one it is. Since there is so much of the Kapton foil still

attached to the CM (i.e., not burned away from the heat of re-entry from return from a Moon trip), I assume that it was from an Earth-orbital mission, either one of the unmanned flights or Apollo 7." This

presented itself as a challenge to me, as I'd like to place this in the Field Guide, but as which

spacecraft?

Here are things we know:

1) It is a flown capsule (apparent)

2) It flew before June 1969 (Ward's description)

3) It is a Block 2 spacecraft (most visible, the side by side forward RCS thrusters above the hatch) and therefore a manned flight

This leads us to Apollo 7, 8, 9 or 10. Only Apollo 7 and 9 remained in Earth orbit (a good hypothesis by Ward to account for the foil thermal tape). So, let's compare these, with Apollo 8 and 10 thrown in for comparison.

Apollo 7

Apollo 8

Apollo 9

Apollo 10

OK, now this can get tough. But there is a distinct area on each spacecraft that could aid us in identification of our unknown. It is the burned area to the right of the hatch around the reaction control thrusters. Here are close-ups of each of these areas with our unknown.

Apollo 7

Apollo 8

Apollo 9

Apollo 10

Unknown

I believe the pattern in the unknown most closely resembles that of Apollo 9. There are also some correlations in the patterns of the foil tape, although there appears to have been a cleaning and possibly some tape removed before it was placed on display. Pictures of Apollo 9 at the Michigan Air & Space Center show very little difference to the display at San Diego, so any cleaning was done before hand.

You may also note that in the unknown picture the outer window frames are removed. Of the four, only Apollo 9 shows signs the attachment screws were accessed . With these clues in place, I believe we can call this unknown Apollo on display at JSC in 1969 the Apollo 9, returned to Earth earlier that year on March 13.