Recovered golf ball from famous Apollo 14 “Moon Shot” now on exhibit
SEATTLE – Some 45 years after tee off, a golf ball, believed to have been the very same ball Alan Shepard shanked on the Moon was found washed up along the coastline in Grays Harbor, WA. This ball is now on display at The Museum of Flight for a very limited time.
The commander of Apollo 14 wanted to do something special while on the moon. In late 1970, he contacted a local golf pro in Houston, who connected the head of a Wilson six-iron to the shaft of a piece of rock collecting equipment. Shepard then covered the club with a sock so it wouldn’t be discovered.
Only a handful of people in NASA knew of Shepard’s plan when, on February 6, 1971, after an extended excursion on the lunar surface, he pulled out the club, dropped two balls on the moon and proceeded to strike. He shanked the ball so hard that it left lunar orbit and entered a Trans-Earth trajectory. It’s likely that ball simply kept orbiting the Earth in an unstable orbit until it finally collided with the atmosphere. Scientists are still a bit unclear about its exact time of re-entry.
The Museum of Flight’s Adjunct Curator for Space History, Geoff Nunn recalls his first contact with Swift: “We get calls about rare discoveries all the time. Naturally, when I got the call from Mr. Swift about this particular find, we were suspect, but indeed, the chemical tests and analyses proved this ball to be the real thing. There were still traces of lunar regolith embedded deep under the surface of the ball’s dimples. We couldn’t be more proud to feature this precious artifact, particularly as we ramp up to the May opening of the Apollo exhibit.”
The ball will be on display in the main lobby this weekend only, April 1 and 2.
For Museum information, please call 206-764-5720 or visit www.museumofflight.org