Artefacts from space missions on show

AN exhibition now running at the River & Rowing Museum gives an insight into some amazing moments in the history of space exploration.

Dr Michael Warner, director of Space Vault, owns a collection of historic space mission artefacts from NASA and the Russian space programme.

He has curated 12 stories, illustrated by rare items bought at auction with carefully scrutinised provenance.

Michael, of Queen Street, Henley, says: “Each has a main title and a story that will be interesting to those involved in space as well as normal space geeks.”

Items being shown include the heavily annotated mission checklist that saved the crew of Apollo 13 when its oxygen tank exploded, with the handwritten mark-ups for the procedures that were improvised by astronomers and read out by “CapCom” (Capital Communicator) Charlie Duke to astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise in April 1970, to safeguard their return.

Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the space programme and was the third intended to land on the Moon. When the oxygen tank ruptured two days into the mission, the crew orbited the Moon, while mission controllers helped work out a solution but could only use materials available on the spacecraft.

The crew managed to get back to Earth and splashed down in the South Pacific Ocean watched on TV by tens of millions of people around the world.

Another item on display is the Orlan glove worn by Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin when he went on space walks to repair the Mir Space Station.

In June 1997, the cargo spacecraft Progress M-34 docked with Mir to replenish supplies but then collided with the space station during docking.

Mir was damaged so in April 1998, Budarin and cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev had to carry out the repairs.

Other artefacts include Commander Dave Scott’s spacesuit umbilical, through which he spoke his first words as he stepped on to the Moon in July 1971.

There is also lunar dust from the Hadley Rille landing site of Scott’s crew on Apollo 15.

Also being shown are the heatshield of Salyut 7, which fell to Earth in Argentina in 1991, X-rays of Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit gloves prior to launch and a NASA space shuttle thermal protection panel.

Michael says: “Armstrong’s gloves were X-rayed nine days before take-off as they were looking for anything sharp in the gloves that might puncture them.

“All these artefacts were bought at auction in the USA. A piece of US legislation in 2012 allowed the astronauts to own items that NASA had given them, so this opened up the market legally.”

• The Space Vault is in the Kirkham Gallery at the River & Rowing Museum and runs until Tuesday, July 1, 2025. For more information, visit rrm.co.uk