The Search For Apollo 10's "Snoopy"

astroengine writes "A UK-led team of astronomers are going to use their comet and asteroid-hunting skills to track down a piece of Apollo history. In 1969, Apollo 10 did everything the first moon landing (Apollo 11) did, except land on the lunar surface. During the Apollo 10 mission, the lunar module, nicknamed 'Snoopy,' was jettisoned and sent into a solar orbit — it is still believed to be out there, 42 years later. 'We're expecting a search arc up to 135 million kilometers in size which is a huge amount of space to look at,' British amateur astronomer Nick Howes told Discovery News. 'We're aware of the scale and magnitude of this challenge but to have the twin Faulkes scopes assist the hunt, along with schools, plus the fact that we'll doubtless turn up many new finds such as comets and asteroids makes this a great science project too.'"

Comments

Re:Money NOT well spent.

[spire3661]

Exactly. The BANK bailout cost the US taxpayer more then the ENTIRE 50 YEAR OPERATING FUND OF NASA.

It's not the only thing

[mbone]

There are also the Apollo 8, 10, 11 and 12 S-IVBs (3rd stage). (Starting with Apollo 13, the S-IVBs were impacted on the Moon to produce "Moonquakes" for the ALSEP seismometers). For all of those except for Apollo 8, there were also 4 large SLAs (panels) around the LM, which were ejected when the LM was retrieved just after TLI. (The Apollo-8 panels stayed on the S-IVB, as it had no LM.) In a real trivia, the Apollo 13-17 SLAs also should be out there, as the S-IVB was directed to hit the Moon after the LM was retrieved, and thus after they were ejected.

There was a claim that the S-IVB for Apollo 12 might have been found. I don't know if that was ever confirmed, though.

Re:This is going to be really tough

[EdZ]

Hopefully, the lander being covered in highly reflective foil should raise it's albedo significantly compared to, say, a comet or asteroid, albeit possibly causing direct reflections to be intermittent.