![]() ![]() All the water and waste was also collected for special treatment. This was, in fact, a converted Airstream campervan, with its wheels taken off and had a filtered air exchange. Then the astronauts, still wearing their BIGs, were flown by helicopter to the aircraft carrier Hornet and ushered straight into what NASA termed a Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF). They sealed up Columbia’s hatch and cleaned that down as well, in case any moon germs had escaped. The crew then climbed into a life raft and washed down their BIGs with a solution of sodium hypochlorite. The astronauts opened the hatch and a navy frogman dressed in a BIG – a full-body “biological isolation garment” with air-filtering mask – tossed in three more BIGs and then retreated upwind for the Apollo crew to get dressed. ![]() Precautions kicked in as soon as the command module Columbia splashed down off the coast of Hawaii. It was imperative to avoid “adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extra-terrestrial matter,” as the UN Outer Space Treaty put it. The combined might of the Public Health Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the rest of the world via the UN, demanded that Apollo 11 undertake strict quarantine precautions. Nonetheless, “moon germs” couldn’t be ruled out and the consequences of a lunar plague were potentially disastrous.
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