SNOOPY
2003
Fiberglass model of a section of the NASA Moon landing module, Horse hair
120x120x60 cm
120x120x60 cm
The Apollo 10 mission was launched on May 21, 1969, as a general rehearsal for the Apollo XI moon landing, which was to occur hardly two months later. The Command Module and the Lunar Module (given the calls signs of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, respectively, by the crew) carried out the complicated choreography of descent and coupling while in orbit and without touching lunar soil, so that the command module would ultimately return to Earth with the crew on board, abandoning the lunar module in an unknown heliocentric orbit. Snoopy thus became the only manned space vehicle that survived its mission without having returned to Earth, remaining as a sort of ghost ship in outer space. In this work, the design of the module's door and windows give rise to the invention of a portrait of Snoopy as an ancient shipwreck, or its transformation into a primitive mask as an allegory for the long career lived by the technology that gave rise to it.