Wednesday, July 17:

A special look at the enhanced Apollo exhibition on board, with opportunities to speak to the Collections & Exhibitions Team. Come aboard throughout the day to hear stories about some of the unique artifacts in the exhibit and get some hands-on experience with artifact care in musuems with our interactive Education Collection! Items in our exhibition’s collection include items made by Hornet’s crew to celebrate their recovery of the astronauts such as pins, caps, menus for special dinners held aboard, and even a fragment of the gold covering the capsule that was removed and kept as a keepsake by a Hornet sailor. 

We will also have on display a Moon rock from the Apollo 16 mission that is on a short loan from the vaults of NASA Ames. This is a rare opportunity to see such a large sample and it will only be on display for the two weeks surrounding the Museum’s Splashdown 50 celebration! 

Our team will also have the Museum’s Mobile Quarantine Facility open throughout the day so visitors can step inside and feel what it would have been like to be an Apollo astronaut put into quarantine after their visit to the Moon! Our Mobile Quarantine Facility was a custom-made Airstream trailer designed for the Apollo program and used for the Apollo 14 mission. MQF trailers were built by NASA to be used for Apollo missions 11, 12, 13, and 14. The astronauts of Apollo 11 were the first people to set foot on the Moon and scientists worried they might return with an infection that could harm Earth’s inhabitants or ecosystem. NASA decided to quarantine the astronauts, equipment, and lunar samples returning from the Moon’s surface for a period of 21 days. NASA planned to quarantine the first four lunar missions–Apollo 11, 12,13, and 14–to determine if Moon germs existed. The astronauts had to leave the recovery helicopter after splashdown and immediately enter the MQF. They were then closed in the MQF along with a flight surgeon. 

This MQF is serial number 004. It was the prototype model and eventually used to house the crew of Apollo 14. Astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa, along with a flight surgeon and a vehicle technician, lived inside this MQF from February 9-12, 1971. Apollo 14 was the last flight to be subjected to quarantine procedures. 

Admission for this event is included in the Museum’s General Admission.

For more information on our Splashdown 50 celebration, please visit uss-hornet.org/splashdown50!