Apollo 16 gets spruced up for 50th anniversary
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Apollo 16 capsule is dusty all these decades after it carried three astronauts to the moon. Cobwebs cling to the spacecraft. Business cards, a pencil, money, a spoon and even a tube of lip balm litter the floor of the giant case that protects the space antique.
The COVID-19 pandemic meant a break in the normal routine of cleaning the ship’s display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, located near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. But workers are sprucing up the spacecraft for the 50th anniversary of its April 1972 flight.
Using microfiber towels, extension poles, brushes, dust-catching wands and vacuums, a crew recently cleaned the 6.5-ton, nearly 11-foot-tall capsule and wiped down its glass enclosure, located beneath a massive Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling.
They removed dozens of items that people had stuck through cracks in the case.
Aside from overseeing the cleaning, consulting curator Ed Stewart taught museum staff how to maintain the capsule, which is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution and has been displayed in the “rocket city” of Huntsville since the 1970s.
Stewart said the command module was in “pretty good shape” considering its age and since it was last cleaned about three years ago.
“I’m pleased to see that there’s not heavy layers of dust. I’ve not seen a lot of insect debris or anything like that, so I take that as a very positive sign,” he said.
Perched atop columns, the capsule — nicknamed “Casper” — is tilted so visitors can look inside and see controls and the metalframed seats where astronauts Ken Mattingly, John Young and Charlie Duke rode to the moon and back.