Multimedia Gallery
One of the most common navigation watches produced, with many used by the U.S. military well into the Cold War era.
The first LORAN receiver for aircraft use to enter service.
Trained in celestial navigation by Harold Gatty
This scrap of paper was found in the Tingmissartoq’s octant case.
Left to right: Apollo 8 astronauts James A. Lovell Jr., William A. Anders, and Frank Borman.
Celestial navigation involved taking readings with a sextant that were automatically fed into the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Astronauts used celestial sightings to update data stored in this computer, which calculated the spacecraft’s velocity and location.
To determine position in space, an Apollo astronaut located a specific star using a telescope and then took a fix using a sextant.