Launch of Apollo 10

Apollo 10 was the fourth crewed mission of the Apollo programme and served as a full dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing. Astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan travelled to lunar orbit in the command module Charlie Brown and the lunar module Snoopy. Stafford and Cernan took the lunar module down to a height of about fifteen kilometres above the surface, testing its systems and surveying the planned landing site in the Sea of Tranquility, before returning to the command module. The crew had not been allowed to land because the module was too heavy to be able to take off again safely. The success of the flight cleared the way for Apollo 11 two months later.

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