Before the
ticker tape parades and the inevitable world tour, the triumphant Apollo 11
astronauts were greeted with a more mundane aspect of life on Earth when they
splashed down 40 years ago today - going through customs.
Just what
did Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins have
to declare? Moon rocks, moon dust and other lunar samples, according to the
customs form filed at the Honolulu Airport in Hawaii on July 24, 1969 - the day
the Apollo 11 crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to end their historic moon
landing mission.
The customs
form is signed by all three Apollo 11 astronauts. They declared their cargo and
listed their flight route as starting Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral) in Florida with a stopover on the moon.
The form was
posted to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Web site this week to mark the
Apollo 11 mission's 40th
anniversary. A copy was obtained by SPACE.com and verified by NASA.
"Yes, it's
authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told SPACE.com. "It was a
little joke at the time."
It's more
humor than fact because Apollo 11 splashed down 920 miles (1,480 km) southwest
of Hawaii and 13 miles (21 km) from the USS Hornet, a Navy ship sent to recover
the crew. It took a two more days for the astronauts to actually return to Hawaii on July 26, where they were welcomed with a July 27 ceremony at Pearl Harbor.
The catch?
The astronauts were trapped inside a NASA trailer as part of a quarantine
effort just in case they brought back any germs or disease from the moon. They
even wore special biological containment suits when they walked out on the deck
of the USS Hornet after being retrieved.
NASA
transported them to Houston, quarantine trailer and all, and they emerged from
isolation three weeks later. (Nowadays, astronauts returning from space exit
their spacecraft almost immediately, though some long-duration astronauts
receive medical checks after spending months in weightlessness.)
Today, NASA
astronauts still have to go through customs, but for more conventional reasons.
Astronauts
on missions headed for the International
Space Station must train in Japan, Canada, Europe and Russia in order practice with the different systems, modules and tools they'll use while visiting
the outpost, which is the end result of 10 years of space construction by 16
different countries.
NASA's
shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven spaceflyers are currently docked at the
station today, where they delivered a Japanese-built experiment porch. Space
station crews launching on Russian Soyuz spacecraft have to make their way to
the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is in Kazakhstan.
No matter
what the mission, even astronauts have to go through customs, NASA officials
said. As part of their routine airline flights to other countries and back,
they of course encounter airport customs.
"The do
have a government passport, but they do have to go through customs," NASA
spokesperson Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters told SPACE.com. "Just like the
rest of us."
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