This afternoon, I won an Apollo Lunar Module Commander’s Side Forward Window!

I have never seen one of these in 9 year of Apollo artifact collecting, nor have the people at Collectspace.

From Heritage site: “Apollo Lunar Module: Vintage Commander’s Side Forward Window (Inner Pane), Originally from a Grumman Employee. The LM’s triangular-shaped front windows were ‘located in the front-face bulkhead of the forward cabin section and were installed in a plane oblique to the vehicle axes to provide an approximately 65° down and 80° outboard. These windows provided the required visibility during the lunar descent, lunar landing, and lunar stay phases of the mission.’ (Apollo Experience Report- Spacecraft Structural Windows)

This, being a left-hand side window pane, has a landing-point designator painted on it which would provide the astronaut the capability of targeting the desired final landing point. It measures approximately 21″ x 20.5″ as pictured (21.5″ x 21″ x 24″ along the sides) and is made from tempered Chemcor (now called “Gorilla”) glass by Corning. There are Electrical Conductive Coating bus wires along the edges of two sides to assist with de-fogging in flight. The first of these we have ever offered.”

6 responses to “Iconic Eagle Eye — the triangular Lunar Module landing window”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    a very cool rendition of what Neil Armstrong was seeing out his window as he landed Eagle on the moon on FlickrColor glossy photos of Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Alan Bean (Apollo 12) exiting their LMs with a front window visible:

    Reply
  2. nhr Avatar
    nhr

    I wonder if these are dual pane windows, with, say, an insulating layer of vacuum or gas between two sealed panes.
    According to this mission report, the temperature on the surface of the Moon varied from +180ºF in the sun to -160ºF in the shade.
    I guess that inside the LM, the temperature was kept within a range more comfortable for humans. The window must therefore have been exposed to a large inside/outside temperature differential, which could justify a dual pane construction…

    Reply
  3. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Yes, and this is the inner pane on the Commander’s Side.

    For each Apollo mission, they landed early in the long lunar day to avoid the mission creeping into nighttime cold.

    Reply
  4. gcgkomrj58 Avatar
    gcgkomrj58

    I have 2 of these windows from my dad who worked at Grumman during the space race. They are actually from Apollo 20, the only Lunar Module that was not built.

    Reply
  5. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/184363616@N04] very cool. Any idea thoughts on where this one came from? Other production spares?

    Reply
  6. stephenjames23 Avatar
    stephenjames23

    Hi, would it be possible to get a traced image of your LM window
    please? i am working on a full scale cockpit sim,thanks,Steve.

    Reply

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