posted 08-07-2016 09:34 PM               

Space Cover #380: NASA's Original Snoopy

Long before NASA adopted Charles Schulz's comic strip beagle as the symbol of crew safety and mission success, a dog served to remind Bendix Field Engineering Corporation personnel at the Devil's Ashpit Apollo tracking site on Ascension Island that excellence was a must for success.

Snoopy was his name and always had been. His mother was a Labrador Retriever. He was a way-faring stranger who passed by the island in 1966 and never left.

Snoopy would awaken every morning at 6 a.m. and would arouse his roommate Harry Turner, the track data and antenna position programmer. Together they go to the NASA site for breakfast and prepare for the day's work.

Bendix M&O Supervisor Jim Murphy assigned Snoopy as doorman. Snoopy greeted every man good morning with a lick and a paw but only after he responded to the dog's signal with, "Whip one on me."

Snoopy's greatest responsibility was reminding the team each morning that its efforts for perfection, its struggle against carelessness, would mean success on the next Apollo flight.

Now, don't let anyone tell you that life on Ascension is hard or that there's nothing for a dog to do. VHF Telemetry Operator Emil Voigt loved to romp in the hills around the station with Snoopy. John Staudt and Norman Israel of the receiver/exciter group would always accompany him fishing. In fact, they say Snoopy's was the best fisherman and swimmer on the island.

Then there was Servo Technician Marsden Wofford. What a pushover. He was always ready to challenge Snoopy with a rag tug-of-war.

Generally, Snoopy was a mild-mannered pooch, but he had one weakness: sheep. After all, he's only canine. One day, Jim Murphy was awakened about 4 a.m. and informed by the authorities that Snoopy had gotten into mischief again. That was his last warning. Several times before, Rex Chapman, ranging and timing operator, had to bail Snoopy out after he had been picked up and canned for chasing those woolly beasts.

PJ Clark recounted that Snoopy would ride between the station and the barracks and he would become quite upset if he was not allowed to ride "shotgun" on these trips so most passengers would take a back seat in the van to allow him to ride up front.

Snoopy would lean into the curves of the road when he was sitting in the front passenger seat. He would begin his counter lean well before the actual curve in order to maintain his equilibrium in the seat. It was amazing to watch. He could even do it night; I think he had the entire route memorized after 100s of trips up and down the hill!

For the sake of the space program and, of course, NASA's animated wonder dog, NASA Station Director Don Dunsmore encouraged the men of Ascension to take care of the living example of "Snoopy", the first watchdog for manned flight.

Ascension Island is located 5,160 miles down range and was one of the original tracking sites for launches from Eastern Test Range and was in place for its earliest unmanned launches.

NASA added its own tracking station in the "Devil's Ashpit" on the southeastern portion of Ascension Island as part of the Manned Space Flight Network and, as a follow on, a Deep Space Network antenna. The DSN antenna supplied Apollo flight data that would have been lost between the 3 main DSN sites at Goldstone California, Canberra/Honeysuckle Creek Australia and Madrid Spain. The MSFN provided data on the Apollo spacecraft soon after Earth orbit insertion, spacecraft checkout prior to injection into lunar transfer orbit, etc.

Pictured above is a cover from the Devil's Ashpit station for the Apollo 5 mission.

Here is the Devil's Ashpit station crew during the Apollo 11 mission...

The Devil's Ashpit Ascension Island tracking site continued tracking manned missions through many of the space shuttle missions until the TDRS system was completely operational.

Pictured above is a cover from the STS-2 mission which is on a #10 envelope but it has the cachets for the NASA Devil's Ashpit station, the USAF Ascension AAF tracking station for the Eastern Test Range, and the Ascension Island Earth Station.