The Apollo 10 crew had a hard order to not land on the moon. Even though they had the right equipment to land on the moon, a lander and a command module that would help land them on the moon. They couldn’t. Why?
The Lunar Module (LM) was overweight and behind schedule. If the LM tried to land it may not be able to slow down. And if it did land on the moon it wouldn’t be more helpful because it would be too heavy to take off again.
NASA wanted to test out how the LM would work in Lunar orbit before they tried a landing later in the summer. In March of 1969, Apollo 9 had the first test of the LM, but that was different in many ways. It was flown in low Earth orbit so it was not the same as the moon's gravity and the Apollo 9 crew couldn’t land on Earth because the LM would burn up. So NASA wanted to send Apollo 10 as a “Dress rehearsal” for Apollo 11.
The Astronauts that were picked for this grand “Dress rehearsal” were Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan. The Astronauts were able to pick the names of their Spacecraft’s. So they named the Command Module (CM): Charlie Brown and the LM: Snoopy
The crew was launched May 18, 1969 to head to the moon.
Nothing went wrong up until the fake landing. Astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan went into Snoopy to get 9.4 miles above the surface before returning to John Young in Charlie Brown. But once Snoopy reached the 9.4 miles and started going back up, it started to tumble. It rolled and rolled. Stafford cursed and tried to get Snoopy forward again. But all that did was make it worse.
Back on earth, mission control watched in terror as the Snoopy rolled faster and faster. This was a problem with the probe flying so low it could crash onto a mountain or possibly hit Charlie Brown waiting for Snoopy in orbit.
John Young, who was in Charlie Brown, Young was in a black out behind the moon he knew nothing was going on. John Young also knew that if anything bad happened and the two astronauts could not fix the problem he would return home to Earth. Which neither NASA or Young wanted to do. But Snoopy was going crazy. It brought back terrible memories of the Gemini 8 mission in which the spacecraft started spinning and almost killed the astronauts.
Snoopy kept spinning faster and faster. But luckily the astronauts saw what the problem was: Nothing was controlling Snoopy, the Autopilot had been turned off. Quickly the crew switched it back on and Snoopy stopped spinning. The crew docked with Charlie Brown and left Snoopy into an internal orbit around the sun. Charlie Brown landed in the ocean three days later.
Gene Cernan would land on the moon on Apollo 17 and would be the last person to set foot on the moon.
Tom Stafford would go on the Apollo-Soyuz missions which were a new allyship with the Soviet Union in space.
John Young would also walk on the moon on Apollo 16.
Snoopy has been claimed to be spotted many times in the 2000’s but if it is out there then Snoopy will not be visited. It would keep orbiting the sun forever in peace.
Image Source: CollectSpace