Alameda Snapshot(s): USS Hornet in Apollo Recovery Mission

Today's Alameda Snapshots come courtesy of NASA. They are of the USS Hornet working both the Apollo 11 and 12 Missions. The floating museum will have several activities to celebrate man's walk on the moon this weekend. See USS Hornet website for details. http://www.uss-hornet.org/

Video of the capsule being placed on the flight deck.






The Apollo 11 mission, the first manned lunar mission, launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida via the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) developed Saturn V launch vehicle on July 16, 1969 and safely returned to Earth on July 24, 1969.

The recovery operation took place in the Pacific Ocean where Navy para-rescue men recovered the capsule housing the 3-man Apollo 11 crew. The crew was airlifted to safety aboard the U.S.S. Hornet recovery ship, where they were quartered in a Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) which served as their home for 21 days. In this photo taken at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the quarantined housing facility is being lowered from the U.S.S. Hornet, onto a trailer for transport to Hickam Field. From there, it was loaded aboard an Air Force C-141 jet and flown back to Ellington Air Force Base Texas, and then on to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, Texas. Date of Image: 1969-07-27


By November the Hornet was out picking up Apollo 12.