Johnson Space Center), suggested using Snoopy as a symbol for safety, and Schulz agreed. Al Chop, director of public affairs for the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. In the wake of the tragic Apollo 1 fire, which claimed the lives of three astronauts, NASA wanted to promote greater flight safety and awareness. Over the years, Snoopy figurines, music boxes, banks, watches, pencil cases, bags, posters, towels, and pins have all promoted a fun and upbeat attitude toward life beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Commercial tie-ins extended well beyond the commemorative plush toy shown at top. Schulz, a space enthusiast, ran comic strips about space exploration, and the moon shot in particular, which helped excite popular support for the program. Since then, Snoopy and NASA have been locked in a mutually beneficial orbit. Space Dog: The Apollo 10 crew nicknamed their lunar module “Snoopy,” which they used to skim, or “snoop,” the moon’s surface. On 21 May, as the astronauts settled in for their first night in lunar orbit, Snoopy’s pilot, Eugene Cernan, asked ground control to “watch Snoopy well tonight, and make him sleep good, and we’ll take him out for a walk and let him stretch his legs in the morning.” The next day, Cernan and Tom Stafford descended in Snoopy, stopping some 14,000 meters above the surface.
The crew was tasked with skimming, or “snooping,” the surface of the moon, so they nicknamed the lunar module “Snoopy.” It logically followed that Apollo 10’s command module was “Charlie Brown.” This mission was essentially a dress rehearsal for Apollo 11. Two months after the comic-strip Snoopy’s lunar landing, a second, real-world Snoopy buzzed the surface of the moon, as part of Apollo 10. Just as NASA had turned to real-life fighter pilots for its first cohort of astronauts, the space agency also recruited Snoopy. Clad in a leather flying helmet, goggles, and signature red scarf, he sat atop his doghouse, reenacting epic battles with his nemesis, the Red Baron. Snoopy was already a renowned World War I flying ace-again, within the Peanuts universe. The comic-strip dog had begun a formal partnership with NASA the previous year, when Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, and its distributor United Feature Syndicate, agreed to the use of Snoopy as a semi-official NASA mascot. “I even beat that stupid cat who lives next door!” “I beat the Russians…I beat everybody,” Snoopy marveled. It was in March 1969-four months before Armstrong would take his famous small step-that the intrepid astrobeagle and his flying doghouse touched down on the lunar surface. In the comic-strip universe of Peanuts, Snoopy beat Neil Armstrong to the moon.
Project Diana Honored With a IEEE Milestone.IEEE Commemorates Anniversary of Human Space Travel.
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