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Following splashdown of Apollo 11, astronaut Michael Collins crawled back into command module Columbia and wrote this short note on one of the equipment bay panels: "Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias ‘Columbia.’ The Best Ship to Come Down the Line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP." While historians have known of this note for many years, during our project to 3D scan the Command Module Columbia, we had the chance to observe and record even more handwritten notes and markings in areas of the spacecraft that had been hidden from view for more than 40 years. One of these newly-discovered bits of astro-graffiti provides some fascinating clues about how the astronauts responded to life inside Columbia: A small hand-drawn calendar, just below one of the lockers with the days of the mission crossed out one by one. July 24th, the day of the crew’s near-dawn splashdown into the Pacific, remains uncrossed. Exactly when this was drawn, by which astronaut, and the purposes it served ar...

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