A speed record no one has broken since

A shortened, 42-hour trajectory back to Earth gave Apollo 10 an unintended record: on 26 May 1969 the ship reached 39,897 km/h relative to Earth’s surface — the highest speed any human has ever travelled, a record that still stands.

On the way home, the crew shaved for the first time in the history of the American space program — a safety razor and gel had previously been considered too risky and were banned. The ship splashed down in the Pacific about 740 km east of American Samoa on 26 May 1969 at 16:52 UTC and was recovered by the carrier USS Princeton; since the crew had not touched the lunar surface, they did not need quarantine like the later landing crews would.

The flight’s data — navigation accuracy, the reliability of the lunar module’s radar, and confirmation of the landing site — gave NASA enough confidence, after two weeks of analysis, to clear Apollo 11 to proceed as planned. Less than two months later, on 20 July 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin landed exactly where Stafford and Cernan had once flown within arm’s reach.