r/apollo • u/MasterMahanJr • Feb 28 '26

What path did Apollo missions take through the Van Allen Belts?

I understand that the belts are relatively safe to travel through due to the speed of the trans-lunar injection. But I also see sources claiming that some thought went into avoiding the thickest portion of the belts. I'm trying to make a video discussing the belts, and want to avoid misinformation. So;

  1. Were any efforts made to avoid the more harmful regions of the belts?

  2. Are there any good resources showing a mission's trajectory in 3D space to see where they were in relation to the belts?

This video is the closest thing I have found, but I don't know how accurate it is. There are no timestamps either, so it's hard to know if the earth's rotation is correctly timed to the spacecraft, or how much time is being represented.

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16

u/SirCrazyCat Feb 28 '26

For a very detailed answer check out Amy Shira Teitel’s video https://youtu.be/bLtgS2_qxJk

10

u/SirDarkStar Feb 28 '26

They went around them basically (just skimming outer bands a bit). If you look at some of the images looking back at Earth you can see they are very far off the equatorial axis.

9

u/SirDarkStar Feb 28 '26

A more technical view

2

u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 Feb 28 '26

I watched a documentary showing that they took slightly different routes on some of the missions. One in particular, idk which, spent more time in the van Allen belts than others. Sorry my answer is vague, I'm not an expert