Workers clean Apollo 16 spaceship ahead of 50th anniversary

The Apollo 16 spacecraft is dusty and home to a few cobwebs decades after it carried three astronauts to the moon

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- The Apollo 16 capsule is dusty all these decades after it carried three astronauts to the moon. Cobwebs cling to the spacecraft. Business cards, a pencil, money, a spoon and even a tube of lip balm litter the floor of the giant case that protects the space antique in a museum.

The COVID-19 pandemic meant a break in the normal routine of cleaning the ship's display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, located near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. But workers are sprucing up the spacecraft for the 50th anniversary of its April 1972 flight.

Delicately using microfiber towels, extension poles, brushes, dust-catching wands and vacuums, a crew recently cleaned the 6.5-ton, nearly 11-foot-tall capsule and wiped down its glass enclosure, located beneath a massive Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling. They removed dozens of items that people had stuck through cracks in the case.

Aside from overseeing the cleaning, consulting curator Ed Stewart taught museum staff how to maintain the capsule, which is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution and has been displayed in the “rocket city” of Huntsville since the 1970s.