Old Tech

Apollo 11 — quality control. Pre-flight x-ray of Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit cover layer boots, 7 july 1969.

Taken just 11 days before the Apollo 11 launch by Jack Weakland, a member of the Nondestructive Evaluation Group (NDE) at NASA. Weakland worked in the X-Ray Lab from 1968-1979, where he tested equipment for a number of Apollo missions, including Apollo 7 and Apollo 11. In an oral history conducted in 2001, Weakland described the rationale behind this quality control measure: “We x-rayed all of the suits, we x-rayed all those things to verify that there were no sharp objects left in them during the manufacturing process, make sure the zippers, when they zipped them up, the seal would form perfectly into the zippered threads”

This x-ray shows Armstrong’s cover layer boots, an extravehicular overshoe that was designed to be worn over his spacesuit boots while walking on the Moon.

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