[APOLLO 10]. FASTEST FLOWN UNITED STATES FLAG CARRIED ON APOLLO 10

FLOWN United States flag, made of silk, 4 by 6 inches. Displayed between paragraphs of a Typed Signed Letter by THOMAS P. STAFFORD on his business stationery. Displayed with an approximately 8 by 8 inch color photograph of the ascent stage of Lunar Module Snoopy has he returns from a close fly-by of the lunar surface. All mounted on and removable from a 12 ½ by 19 ½ inch blue mat board.

The flag is INSCRIBED and SIGNED: “Flown to the Moon on Apollo X, TOM STAFFORD,” along the lowest red bar. The color photograph of Snoopy is SIGNED by TOM STAFFORD. THOMAS P. STAFFORD'S signed provenance display letter reads: “The United States flag displayed below was flown to the Moon on Apollo X during May 18-26, 1969. I was commander of this mission which tested critical flight maneuvers that would enable Apollo 11 to make the first lunar landing just two months later in July 1969. I carried this flag inside our Lunar Module named ‘Snoopy’ where Gene Cernan and I approached within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface.

Just prior to the beginning of the Apollo X re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere on May 26, John Young, Gene, and I – as well as this flag - established the all-time record for the highest speed ever flown by man — 24,791 nautical miles per hour. Therefore, this flag is one of the fastest flown space artifacts to exist from the Apollo Program. This speed record will not be broken until an astronaut crew returns from a mission to Mars sometime during the twenty-first century.”