On May 18, 1969, NASA launched the Apollo 10 mission. Apollo 10 was designed to test every part of the Apollo 11 mission, except for the landing. Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan and John Young were the three astronauts onboard. The three safely landed in the Pacific Ocean on May 26 after 31 revolutions around the Moon.
Apollo 10 launched from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. Atop a Saturn V, the crew rose the craft to an altitude of 115 miles around the Earth. The crew put on multiple color broadcasts for the rest of Earth throughout the trans-lunar injection burn, where the capsule ignites its engines to put it on a course to intersect the Moon’s gravitational pull.
While in a stable orbit around the Moon at an altitude of about 69 miles, the crew sent back the first color TV pictures of the Moon’s surface. The lunar module, or LM, which would land on the Moon in future missions, then undocked from the rest of the craft with Cernan and Stafford inside. The LM then performed a burn to lower its orbit, simulating the process of a lunar landing. The LM met up and successfully docked with the main craft, and started the return flight to Earth.
This mission proved to the world and NASA that a moon landing was possible. Most of the time astronauts spent around the Moon was dedicated to tracking landmarks and photography. With no major complications, the mission was a huge success. Every objective NASA planned was achieved.
This information was gathered from nasa.gov.
