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I read recently the original Apollo 11 press release and it mentions that the Saturn V's third stage (used for Trans-Lunar Injection) was deployed into a solar orbit of some kind:

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I know that on other Apollo missions the third stage was crashed into the Moon ahead of the lunar module's landing to trigger the seismometers left behind by previous missions. Which Apollo flights did this and which ones sent their third stages to wander the solar system? For the ones that went into solar orbits, how well were those orbits measured? Do we know where they are now?

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Where is the scanned text from? – raxacoricofallapatorius Sep 7 '12 at 19:33
The document is titled Press Kit - Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Mission. NASA Release no. 69-83K, page 6. Since it's a press kit I imagine there's no harm in sending copies to interested parties (it's a pretty cool document anyway). – Emilio Pisanty Sep 7 '12 at 21:45
Cool, that's a fascinating document! – raxacoricofallapatorius Sep 7 '12 at 21:55
For those interested, the preliminary science report is also damn cool. – Emilio Pisanty Sep 7 '12 at 22:01
The images from the press kit's descritpion of the mission profile have also been beautifully put to good use in Wikipedia. – Emilio Pisanty Oct 18 '12 at 18:19

1 Answer

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The third stages of the first four Apollo lunar missions (8, 10, 11 and 12) were placed in a heliocentric orbit, while those of subsequent missions (13 on) were targeted at the moon.

The locations of the orbiting stages are not particularly well known, unless we happen to encounter one, as we did in 2002 when the third stage for Apollo 12 briefly orbited Earth as J002E3, likely due to an incomplete burn resulting in an unstable orbit.

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