Skywizard
10th February 2015, 02:16
Instead of leaving behind a bag of 'trash,' astronaut Neil Armstrong towed a 'McDivitt purse' of lunar module
parts, including an Hasselblad camera, back to Earth and stashed it in a closet for his wife to find after his death.
http://static2.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2107513.1423432928!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/apollo9n-4-web.jpg
After Carol Armstrong found the bag, she dumped it out on the carpet to catalog the parts.
The first astronaut to step onto the lunar surface kept his man purse.
The widow of American astronaut Neil Armstrong discovered a stashed white bag in a closet months after his 2012 death. Inside she found a trove of priceless parts initially thought to have been ditched on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
Carol Armstrong had a feeling her husband’s treasure may have come from a spacecraft, according to the Smithsonian, whose Air and Space Museum will be displaying the lost parts.
Smithsonian experts quickly realized its contents, including metal clips, tethers, mirrors, netting and even an 80mm Hasselblad camera, were from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle.
The bag, also called a McDivitt purse, may have attracted traces of moon dust on it as the astronauts used it to hold items on the lunar surface.
It’s also believed Armstrong used the brown tether with a metal clip to hold his legs and rest up before leaving the Moon’s surface.
Despite the bag’s importance to space travel historians, it remained forgotten in the astronaut’s closet for 46 years. Not even Armstrong’s own biographer knew about it.
Its discovery shouldn’t be that much of a shock. Armstrong mentions the bag before departing the moon, according to the mission’s transcript.
“You know, that — that one's just a bunch of trash that we want to take back — LM parts, odds and ends, and it won't stay closed by itself; we'll have to figure something out for it,” Armstrong said.
It was supposed to be trashed with their life support backpacks and lunar overshoes, but Armstrong took it back to Earth and then his closet.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/neil-armstrong-widow-found-apollo-11-artifacts-closet-article-1.2107517
peace...
parts, including an Hasselblad camera, back to Earth and stashed it in a closet for his wife to find after his death.
http://static2.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2107513.1423432928!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/apollo9n-4-web.jpg
After Carol Armstrong found the bag, she dumped it out on the carpet to catalog the parts.
The first astronaut to step onto the lunar surface kept his man purse.
The widow of American astronaut Neil Armstrong discovered a stashed white bag in a closet months after his 2012 death. Inside she found a trove of priceless parts initially thought to have been ditched on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
Carol Armstrong had a feeling her husband’s treasure may have come from a spacecraft, according to the Smithsonian, whose Air and Space Museum will be displaying the lost parts.
Smithsonian experts quickly realized its contents, including metal clips, tethers, mirrors, netting and even an 80mm Hasselblad camera, were from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle.
The bag, also called a McDivitt purse, may have attracted traces of moon dust on it as the astronauts used it to hold items on the lunar surface.
It’s also believed Armstrong used the brown tether with a metal clip to hold his legs and rest up before leaving the Moon’s surface.
Despite the bag’s importance to space travel historians, it remained forgotten in the astronaut’s closet for 46 years. Not even Armstrong’s own biographer knew about it.
Its discovery shouldn’t be that much of a shock. Armstrong mentions the bag before departing the moon, according to the mission’s transcript.
“You know, that — that one's just a bunch of trash that we want to take back — LM parts, odds and ends, and it won't stay closed by itself; we'll have to figure something out for it,” Armstrong said.
It was supposed to be trashed with their life support backpacks and lunar overshoes, but Armstrong took it back to Earth and then his closet.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/neil-armstrong-widow-found-apollo-11-artifacts-closet-article-1.2107517
peace...