NASA and the Newseum will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 10 mission during a program at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 18, in Washington.
Astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan will participate in the program moderated by journalist-in-residence Nick Clooney. The event is open to reporters and visitors to the Newseum, which is located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. in Washington. The event will be carried live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s Web site.
On May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon. The flight was a test run, a crucial dress rehearsal leading up to the historic Apollo 11 mission that two months later carried the first people to walk on the moon. Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the Apollo program and the second to reach lunar orbit.
During the mission, John Young piloted the command module, while Stafford and Cernan descended to within 8.4 nautical miles of the moon’s surface. Cernan, the second American to walk in space, later would become the last person to walk on moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Apollo 10’s journey to the moon and back to Earth took 192 hours, 3 minutes and 23 seconds.
The Newseum is a 250,000-square-foot museum of news that offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits. In its seven levels of galleries, theaters, retail spaces and visitor services, the Newseum offers a unique environment that takes museum-goers behind the scenes to experience how and why news is made.
For more information about NASA’s Apollo 40th anniversary, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th
For biographical information about the astronauts, visit:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio_former.html
For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For more information about the Newseum, visit:
http://www.newseum.org
