As the country celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this week, an important piece of that mission's history, the Apollo 11 recovery coordinator logbook, has been preserved by the University Libraries' Special Collections and University Archives. This logbook details the mission recovery team's efforts to plan for visiting dignitaries on the recovery ship, the USS Hornet; ensure containment of any returning "moon germs"; and recover the returning Apollo command module, the Columbia, from the Pacific Ocean. The logbook is part of the Dr. James E. Tomayko Collection of NASA Documents and may be viewed in special collections in Ablah Library.
Tomayko was a former WSU faculty member who founded the software engineering graduate program at WSU. During his career, he often served as a consultant to aerospace organizations such as NASA, Boeing, Xerox and Carnegie Works, where he developed a passion for research in the history of technology. Tomayko left the university in 1989 and passed away in 2006.
