Apollo 9 S-IVB burn

[PeterB]

I was idly reading the Apollo 9 entry on the Apollo Flight Journal today, and discovered that the crew filmed a burn of the S-IVB with their Data Acquisition Camera.

The burn took place after the LM had been extracted, and the third stage was somewhere around a mile away from the CSM/LM. The S-IVB's engine bell faced the crew, and they were able to capture the burn on camera.

I was wondering if anyone knows whether this footage is available, and, if so, where?

Cheers

[ajv]

It's on the Spacecraft Films Apollo 9 set.

There are a few seconds prior to and about ten seconds of the burn that was filmed. It's not zoomed in very much but you can see an initial expulsion of material before it settles down into a constant bright burn.

[ka9q]

Is that the sequence Jarrah White put into one of his videos saying it disproved our claims that engine plumes were invisible in space? At the time I thought it was the burn-to-depletion of the LM ascent stage, but I couldn't be sure. At that distance, and with nothing to give a sense of scale, I suspect most liquid rocket burns would look much the same: an initial flash at ignition, then an invisible plume and a visible glow if you happen to be looking up inside the engine bell.

That last burn of the S-IVB took the stage out of earth orbit and into solar orbit, where it still resides along with the S-IVBs of the Apollo 8, 10, 11 and 12 missions. Starting with Apollo 13 they were all dumped onto the moon.

About 8 years go Apollo 12's S-IVB was rediscovered temporarily recaptured in a highly elliptical earth orbit. It has since left again for its own orbit around the sun. I wonder if any of the other S-IVBs can do that.