essay on apollo 13

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Houston, we’ve had a problem

Around the moon.

• Reentry and splashdown
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When did Apollo 13 launch?

U.S. spaceflight Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970.

Where was the launch site of Apollo 13?

The Apollo 13 spaceflight was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Kennedy, Florida, by a giant Saturn V launch vehicle and minutes later was inserted into orbit around Earth.

Who were the crew of Apollo 13?

The three astronauts of Apollo 13 were commander Jim Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise, and command module pilot Jack Swigert.

On April 13 a loud explosion was heard by the Apollo 13 crew. The crew radioed mission control: "Houston, we’ve had a problem." As the seriousness of the situation became apparent, mission control announced that the mission now was not a lunar landing but instead was to swing around the Moon in an attempt to get the astronauts safely home.

When did Apollo 13 return to Earth?

The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.

Apollo 13 , U.S. spaceflight, launched on April 11, 1970, that suffered an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon , threatening the lives of three astronauts —commander Jim Lovell , lunar module pilot Fred Haise , and command module pilot Jack Swigert .

Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Kennedy , Florida, by a giant Saturn V launch vehicle and only minutes later was inserted into orbit around Earth . About 2.5 hours after launch, the still-attached S IVB third stage was reignited to provide the final boost toward the Moon . The transposition maneuver (removing the lunar module, code-named Aquarius , from the S IVB adapter) was carried out efficiently, and soon Apollo 13 was coasting toward the Moon on a path so accurate that the first planned course adjustment was canceled. Later in the mission, the craft underwent a hybrid transfer maneuver to facilitate landing in the difficult Fra Mauro region of the Moon. To do this, the service module’s propulsion system provided a 4.6-metre- (15-foot-) per-second velocity change designed to lower the command module’s closest approach to the Moon from 389 km (242 miles) to 109 km (68 miles) and place the craft on a “non-free-return” trajectory. This meant that should no further propulsive maneuver be made during the flight, the craft would not swing around the Moon and return directly to Earth on a “free-return” trajectory but instead would miss Earth by 4,750 km (2,950 miles). However, a shift back to a free-return trajectory was within the capability of both the service module propulsion system and the lunar module descent stage propulsion system. So accurate was the hybrid transfer that a scheduled course correction was canceled.

April 12, the day after launch, passed without incident. Early on the evening of April 13, the astronauts pressurized the lunar module Aquarius , and Lovell and Haise passed from the command module Odyssey through the connecting tunnel while checking all systems for the forthcoming landing. Suddenly, as Lovell was moving through the tunnel on his way back from Aquarius to Odyssey , a loud explosion was heard. All three astronauts quickly gathered in Odyssey to study the instruments in an effort to determine what had happened. Noting that one of the main electrical systems aboard was degrading , Haise and Lovell radioed the information to mission control in Houston, quickly turning a routine flight into one of the most exciting episodes in space history.

Haise: Okay, Houston— Lovell: I believe we’ve had a problem here. Mission control: This is Houston. Say again please. Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a main B bus undervolt.

Within eight seconds of the explosion, pressure in one of the service module’s two cryogenic oxygen tanks had dropped to zero. Together with the cryogenic hydrogen tanks, they fed the required supplies to the craft’s three fuel cells, which were needed for the generation of electrical power, oxygen for breathing, and drinking water.

About an hour after the accident, mission control announced that “we are now looking toward an alternate mission, swinging around the Moon and using the lunar module power systems because of the situation that has developed here this evening.” The astronauts were to move into Aquarius , which would serve as a lifeboat, while the disabled Apollo 13 swung around the Moon and headed homeward. All thoughts of a lunar landing had long since been abandoned.

The anxiety for the safety of the astronauts was felt in every corner of the globe, and millions of persons remained glued to television and radio sets as the perilous journey unfolded. Still three days away from Earth, the astronauts moved into the lunar module Aquarius , which they powered up before shutting down the command module Odyssey to conserve the latter’s emergency battery power for the atmospheric reentry maneuver at the end of the mission. Only the command module could pass through Earth’s atmosphere; the lunar module would have to be discarded, along with the service module, before the outer atmosphere was reached. In the meantime, however, the lunar module would be their home.

When the astronauts first transferred into and activated Aquarius , Apollo 13 was about 20 hours from the Moon. Plans were made for transferring out of the hybrid trajectory and onto the free-return trajectory, a maneuver that was executed in the early morning hours of April 14. At mission control, teams of experts worked to check out all feasible maneuvers and situations in flight simulators, feeding every plan and contingency through computers. Leaders from all parts of the world voiced concern, and from Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin came the message that “the Soviet Government has given orders to all citizens and members of the armed forces to use all necessary means to render assistance in the rescue of the American astronauts.” Four Soviet ships began moving toward the planned recovery area, while French and British warships also moved to the rescue. Radio contact with Apollo 13 was lost during the evening of April 14 as the craft swung behind the Moon, passing at an altitude of 264 km (164 miles) at the closest approach. (Since their trajectory had a higher lunar altitude than other Apollo missions, Apollo 13 set the record for farthest flight from Earth of 401,056 km [249,205 miles].) Soon afterward the spacecraft started along its return path home. Meanwhile, the long-since-discarded S IVB third stage crashed onto the Moon—it had followed an independent trajectory—as part of a planned experiment to cause an artificial moonquake to aid scientists in understanding the nature of the lunar interior. When the astronauts learned from Houston of the stage’s impact, Swigert radioed back, “Well, at least something worked on this flight.…I’m sure glad we didn’t have an LM [Lunar Module] impact too!”

About two hours later the descent stage propulsion system of the lunar module was ignited for 5 seconds at 10 percent throttle, 21 seconds at 40 percent throttle, and almost 4 minutes at full throttle. This added 941 km (585 miles) per hour to Apollo 13’s velocity, thereby cutting by 10 hours the length of the homeward journey and ensuring a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean south of Samoa. On board the spacecraft, oxygen stores remained sufficient, as did cooling water. The astronauts reduced their consumption of drinking water to six ounces per day and their consumption of electricity by 80 percent. However, the lunar module’s lithium hydroxide cartridges that removed carbon dioxide from the air would last only about 50 hours, and those from the command module were not designed to fit Aquarius . Therefore, engineers on the ground devised a makeshift adapter scheme, radioing to Apollo 13 instructions on how to attach the cartridges from the command module to the lunar module hoses. The job was done, and Haise reported, “Our do-it-yourself lithium hydroxide canister change is complete.”

Apollo 13: Facts about NASA's near-disaster moon mission

Apollo 13 is famously described as a "successful failure". Learn more about the mission here.

Apollo 13 crew

Apollo 13 faqs.

• "Houston, we've had a problem"
• Apollo 13: Making it home

Apollo 13's legacy

Additional resources.

Apollo 13 was NASA 's third moon-landing mission, but the astronauts never made it to the lunar surface. 

During the mission's dramatic series of events, an oxygen tank explosion almost 56 hours into the flight forced the crew to abandon all thoughts of reaching the moon . The spacecraft was damaged, but the crew was able to seek cramped shelter in the lunar module for the trip back to Earth , before returning to the command module for an uncomfortable splashdown. 

The mission stands today as an example of the dangers of space travel and of NASA's innovative minds working together to save lives on the fly. The Apollo 13 mission celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 11, 2020.

Related: NASA's moonwalking Apollo astronauts: Where are they now?

The Apollo 13 astronauts were commander James Lovell , lunar module pilot Fred Haise , and command module pilot John "Jack" Swigert . 

At age 42, Lovell was the world's most traveled astronaut when he joined the Apollo 13 mission, with three missions and 572 spaceflight hours under his belt. Lovell participated in Apollo 8 , the first mission to circle the moon, and flew two Gemini missions — including a 14-day endurance run.

Prior to the Apollo 13 mission, 36-year-old Haise served as the backup lunar module pilot for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions. Haise was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps before joining NASA as a test pilot. He was selected for the manned space program in 1966, at the same time as Swigert. Apollo 13 was Haise's only trip to space. 

Apollo 13 was Swigert's first trip to space, at age 38. He had been part of the support crew for Apollo 7 and was initially Apollo 13's backup command module pilot. He was asked to join the crew 48 hours before launch time after the original command module pilot, Ken Mattingly , was exposed to German measles.  

Did the Apollo 13 crew survive?

Yes, though the mission failed to reach the moon, Apollo 13 made it back to Earth successfully and the whole crew — commander James Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise, and command module pilot John "Jack" Swigert — survived. 

What happened to the real Apollo 13?

Apollo 13 was NASA's third moon-landing mission but didn't reach the lunar surface. A series of problems plagued the Odyssey spacecraft which was designed to bring them home, causing the crew to abandon all thoughts of reaching the moon. 

A fire ripped through one of Odyssey's oxygen tanks and damaged another. Oxygen fed the fuel cells in the spacecraft, so power was also reduced. Fortunately the spacecraft Aquarius — designed to land on the moon — was still in working order. But Aquarius didn't have a heat shield so it would not survive the reentry back to Earth. So the crew crammed themselves into Aquarius — which was designed for two people, not three — and began the long cold journey home. Without a source of heat, cabin temperatures quickly dropped close to freezing. Some food became inedible. The crew also rationed water to make sure Aquarius — operating for longer than it was designed — would have enough liquid to cool its hardware down.

In the hours before splashdown, the exhausted crew scrambled back over to the Odyssey and powered it up. 

Thanks to a monumental effort from the crew, mission control and spacecraft manufacturers helping with the mission, Lovell, Haise and Swigert safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa, on April 17, 1970.  

How did Apollo 13 get back to Earth safely?

The Apollo 13 crew used their lunar lander — Aquarius — as a makeshift 'lifeboat' to survive the long cold journey back to Earth. It was a rough journey home. The entire spaceflight crew lost weight, and Fred Haise developed a kidney infection. But the small vessel protected and carried the crew long enough to reach Earth's atmosphere. The crew only returned to Odyssey in the hours before splashdown to power it up and begin their reentry to Earth.  

Apollo 13: "Houston, we've had a problem"

Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970. The Apollo spacecraft was made up of two independent spacecraft joined by a tunnel: orbiter Odyssey, and lander Aquarius. The crew lived in Odyssey on the journey to the moon.

On the evening of April 13, when the crew was nearly 322,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) from Earth and closing in on the moon, mission controller Sy Liebergot saw a low-pressure warning signal on a hydrogen tank in Odyssey.

The signal could have shown a problem, or could have indicated the hydrogen just needed to be resettled by heating and fanning the gas inside the tank. That procedure was called a "cryo stir", and was supposed to stop the supercold gas from settling into layers.

Related: This stunning 4K video re-creates Apollo 13's perilous trip around the moon

Swigert flipped the switch for the routine procedure. A moment later, the entire spacecraft shook. Alarm lights lit up in Odyssey and in Mission Control as oxygen pressure fell and power disappeared. The crew notified Mission Control, with Swigert famously saying, "Houston, we've had a problem." (Note that the 1995 movie "Apollo 13" took some creative license with the phrase, changing it to "Houston, we have a problem" and having the words come out of Apollo 13 commander James Lovell's mouth).

Much later, a NASA accident investigation board determined wires were exposed in the oxygen tank because of a combination of manufacturing and testing errors before flight. That fateful night, a spark from an exposed wire in the oxygen tank caused a fire, ripping apart one oxygen tank and damaging another inside the spacecraft.

— Failure was not an option: NASA's Apollo 13 mission of survival in pictures

— Apollo 13 timeline: The hectic days of NASA's 'successful failure' to the moon

— Apollo 13 at 50: How NASA turned near-disaster at the moon into a 'successful failure' in space

Since oxygen fed Odyssey's fuel cells, power was reduced as well. The spacecraft's attitude control thrusters, sensing the venting oxygen, tried to stabilize the spacecraft by firing small jets. The system wasn't very successful given several of the jets were slammed shut by the explosion.

Fortunately for Apollo 13, the damaged Odyssey had a healthy backup: Aquarius, which wasn't supposed to be turned on until the crew was close to landing on the moon. Haise and Lovell frantically worked to boot Aquarius up in less time than designed. Aquarius didn't have a heat shield to survive the drop back to Earth, so as Lovell and Haise got the lunar module up and running, Swigert remained in Odyssey to shut down its systems to conserve power for splashdown. 

Apollo 13's cold, miserable trip home

The crew had to balance the challenge of getting home with the challenge of preserving power on Aquarius. After they performed a crucial burn to point the spacecraft back toward Earth, the crew powered down every nonessential system in the spacecraft.

Without a source of heat, cabin temperatures quickly dropped down close to freezing. Some food became inedible. The crew also rationed water to make sure Aquarius — operating for longer than it was designed — would have enough liquid to cool its hardware down. And Aquarius was pretty cramped as it was designed to hold two people, not three.

On Earth, flight director Gene Kranz pulled his shift of controllers off regular rotation to focus on managing consumables like water and power. Other mission control teams helped the crew with its daily activities. Spacecraft manufacturers worked around the clock to support NASA and the crew.

It was a rough journey home. The entire spaceflight crew lost weight, and Haise developed a kidney infection. But the small vessel protected and carried the crew long enough to reach Earth's atmosphere.

In the hours before splashdown, the exhausted crew scrambled back over to the Odyssey and powered it up. The craft had essentially been in a cold water soak for days and could have shorted out, but thanks to safeguards put in place after the Apollo 1 disaster, there were no issues. 

Lovell, Haise and Swigert safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa, on April 17.  

Numerous design changes were made to the Apollo service module and command module on subsequent missions in the Apollo program. According to former mission controller Sy Liebergot in an article by collectSPACE the changes included:

• Another cryo oxygen tank that could be isolated to only supply the crew.
• Removing all cryo tank fans and wiring.
• Removing the thermostats from cryo tanks, and changing the type of heater tube.
• Adding a 400-amp-hour lunar module descent stage battery.
• Adding water storage bags to the command module.

As for the astronauts, Haise was assigned to command the Apollo 19 moon mission. However, it and two other missions were canceled after NASA's budget was cut. He later piloted the space shuttle Enterprise during its test flights.

In 1982, Swigert was elected to Congress in his home state of Colorado. However, during the campaign, he was diagnosed with bone cancer, and he died before he could be sworn in.

In 1994, Lovell and journalist Jeffrey Kluger co-wrote a book about Lovell's spaceflight career that primarily focused on the events of the Apollo 13 mission. The book, " Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 " (Houghton Mifflin, 1994), spurred the 1995 movie "Apollo 13," starring actor Tom Hanks. The movie won two Academy Awards and was filmed in cooperation with NASA.

The agency gave the movie crew access to the 1960s-era Mission Control in Houston to reconstruct the site as a set, and also let the actor "astronauts" fly aboard NASA's Vomit Comet airplane to simulate weightlessness. Lovell made a cameo at the end of the film as the captain of the U.S.S. Iwo Jima; Marilyn Lovell and Gene Kranz made short appearances as well, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Other biographical accounts of the Apollo 13 mission include Liebergot and David Harland's " Apollo EECOM: Journey of a Lifetime " (Collector's Guide Publishing, 2003) and Kranz's " Failure Is Not An Option " (Simon & Schuster, 2000). Several non-fiction books have also examined Apollo 13, such as Andrew Chaikin's " A Man On The Moon " (Penguin Books, 1994), which included interviews with all of the surviving Apollo astronauts. 

Read more about Apollo in this in-depth article from NASA . Explore the "successful failure" mission with this virtual exhibit from Space Center Houston . Discover other great stories from the Apollo missions with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum .  

Bibliography

"Space is hard - mission control after Apollo 13". 17, April. 2020. ESA 

Lovell, Jim, and Jeffrey Kluger. Apollo 13. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 .

Kauffman, James. " A successful failure: NASA’s crisis communications regarding Apollo 13. " Public Relations Review 27.4 (2001): 437-448.

NASA Apollo 13 Mission Report, 1970 . 

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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How Apollo 13 Became NASA’s ‘Successful Failure’

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: April 17, 2024 | Original: April 10, 2015

After its successful launch , the spacecraft Apollo 13 and its crew of three—commander Jim Lovell, command module pilot Jack Swigert and lunar module pilot Fred Haise—were on their way to the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. There, Lovell and Haise planned to roam the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments, becoming the fifth and sixth men to walk on the lunar surface. But things didn’t turn out that way. On April 13, an explosion ripped apart one of the spacecraft’s oxygen tanks, crippling its power supply and turning what had been a routine mission into a heart-stopping race for survival.

The Apollo 13 spacecraft was actually two crafts—a command module, or orbiter (Odyssey) and a landing module (Aquarius) joined together by a tunnel. On their journey to the moon, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, Lovell, Haise and Swigert lived inside the Odyssey. Early on the evening of April 13, the spacecraft was just over 200,000 miles from Earth, and scheduled to enter the moon’s orbit the following day. After conducting a TV broadcast, the astronauts activated Aquarius in order to inspect its systems for the lunar landing.

At 9:08 p.m., just as Lovell was moving through the tunnel on the way back to Odyssey, an explosion rocked the ship. Within eight seconds of the blast, pressure in one of the spacecraft’s cryogenic oxygen tanks dropped to zero, disrupting the command module’s supply of oxygen, electricity, light and water. The crew scrambled to identify what had happened, and Swigert radioed their distress to mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

“This is Houston,” mission control responded. “Say again, please.”

Lovell then repeated Swigert’s famous words: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”

Within an hour after the explosion, Apollo 13’s flight had been converted from a lunar landing to a survival mission. Controllers in Houston instructed the astronauts to move into Aquarius, and effectively use the landing module as a lifeboat as they tried to make their way back to Earth. Designed for transport from the command module to the moon’s surface and back, Aquarius had a power supply sufficient for two astronauts over 45 hours. Now it would have to sustain three men for at least 90 hours, over a distance of more than 200,000 miles.

Lovell, Swigert and Haise restricted their water rations to 6 ounces per day and reduced their consumption of electricity by 80 percent. In order to remove carbon dioxide from the cabin, mission control devised a makeshift adapter using materials known to be on board, then radioed the astronauts instructions on how to attach the lithium hydrogen cartridges from the command module to the landing module’s hoses. Lovell and his crew also had to perform a risky five-minute engine burn to generate enough speed to get the spacecraft home before its power ran out.

As Aquarius didn’t have a heat shield that would allow it to survive the trip back to Earth, Odyssey would have to be restarted in order to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. After three days of frantic work on the part of thousands of flight controllers, engineers and NASA managers around the country, the astronauts executed the tricky process of powering up the command module, jettisoning the crippled service module and moving out of the lunar module in preparation for reentry.

Having shed Aquarius as well, Odyssey re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere just before 1 p.m. on April 17. After four minutes of radio silence, eyes around the world turned to the skies over the Pacific Ocean, until the astronauts’ parachutes were spotted and they touched down safely on the water’s surface. Brought home aboard the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima, Lovell, Haise and Swigert received a hero’s welcome, though their mission had been one of the more spectacular failures in NASA history .

A subsequent NASA investigation found that a combination of manufacturing and testing errors before Apollo 13’s flight had left wires exposed in the oxygen tank. A spark from one of these exposed wires caused a fire, which destroyed one of the tanks and damaged the other. NASA redesigned the spacecraft with better wiring and an extra tank, and subsequent missions avoided similar problems. Decades later, Apollo 13 stands as one of the most famous space missions in history, a “successful failure” (in Lovell’s words) that showcased the innovation and perseverance necessary to bring three astronauts home after a life-threatening ordeal.

HISTORY Vault: Modern Marvels - Apollo 13

The Apollo 13 mission was intended to be a "routine" trip to the moon. But when an oxygen tank exploded, the spacecraft was crippled. With limited resources, could its three-man crew survive?

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Adversity — Apollo 13: Triumph Over Adversity

Apollo 13: Triumph Over Adversity

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Introduction, technical challenges faced, collaborative efforts, long-term impact on space exploration.

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NASA Saw Apollo 13 as a Fiasco. 50 Years Later, Astronaut Jim Lovell Has Made Peace With the ‘Successful Failure’

J im Lovell was never supposed to fly Apollo 13 in the first place. Back in the days of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs, with a robust corps of astronauts competing for limited seats on limited spacecraft, the flight rotation followed a three-plus-three pattern. Once you had flown a mission, you would go to the end of the line, waiting to serve as a back-up crew member three missions later. You would train with the prime crew, sweat out the long days in classrooms and simulators with the prime crew, and then stand on the ground and watch the rocket go when that same prime crew lifted off. Three missions after that, it would be your turn to fly again.

Lovell, who had flown twice in the Gemini program, was tapped for Apollo 8, the historic first lunar orbit, which flew during Christmas week in 1968 and produced the celebrated Earthrise picture . That put him in line to serve as back-up commander to Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11—benchwarmer for the first man on the moon —and to fly his own lunar landing mission as commander of Apollo 14, scheduled for the autumn of 1970.

That’s the way it was planned—except that Al Shepard, the first American in space and the man set to be the commander of Apollo 13, needed some additional time for training. He’d been grounded after his first flight, in 1961, due to an inner ear problem and had only recently undergone corrective surgery and been re-certified to fly. A nine-year break was a long time, and out of an abundance of caution NASA asked Lovell if he wouldn’t mind switching missions with Shepard.

Lovell readily agreed to lead Apollo 13 instead of 14. Flying sooner was always better than flying later, especially with the U.S. hemorrhaging funds on the Vietnam War and Congress looking for ways to save money elsewhere in the budget. After all, with the U.S. having beaten the Soviets to the moon, NASA’s lunar program was a plump target for budget cuts. For Lovell, grabbing an earlier mission was all upside—and as for the unlucky portent of a mission numbered 13? Well, were we a people of science or superstition?

So Apollo 13, which lifted off fifty years ago this week, on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 PM military time, went off as planned—until on April 13 it all went to hell, when an explosion in an oxygen tank crippled the Apollo orbiter, requiring the crew to use the lunar module as a lifeboat and fight their way home.

NASA considered the mission a failure; Lovell always called it “a successful failure,” and ultimately, his view would prevail.

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The mission is now thought of as one of the greatest exercises in human ingenuity, improvisation and on-the-fly decision-making. It is taught in business school crisis-management classes, and is enshrined alongside Apollos 8 and 11 as part the great triptych of American space exploration. As for all those later missions that did succeed in landing on the moon—Apollos 14, 15, 16 and 17? Footnotes to the one that didn’t.

Still, history comes with hurt. I have known Lovell for more than a quarter of a century, ever since we began our collaboration on the book Lost Moon, which became the basis of the 1995 film Apollo 13. (The book was later renamed to match the movie.) The very first time I met Lovell—22 years after Apollo 13 flew—I asked him if missing his chance to land still stung. He answered briskly if not brusquely: No, it didn’t, he said. He’d long since gotten over that disappointment. But that felt like his canned answer, one he’d repeated an untold number of times over the years. I had made a mistake. I’d asked way too soon.

It would be 23 years before I’d ask again, in the summer of 2015, when I was writing a book on Apollo 8 and visited the Lovells in their Chicago home. By that time, the movie was 20 years old, the mission had been redeemed in the public mind and Lovell’s depiction by Tom Hanks, as well as his time on the speech-making circuit, had secured him a spot on the Rushmore of astronauts, along with other names like Armstrong and Glenn and Gagarin. The speeches had paid well too, allowing Lovell to build his oldest son, who is a chef, his own restaurant. In Lovell’s living room on that July day in 2015, he was much more reflective than he’d been when I’d bulled ahead with the same question in 1992.

“Imagine if I’d landed,” he mused. “I’d have said a few words nobody would remember and that would be that. We’d have had no book, no movie, there’d have been no restaurant. A lot has happened as a result of that successful failure.”

He sounded as if he meant it and I think he did. He is the only astronaut to have flown on two of those three great Apollo missions, and that is no small thing. And yet. The Lovells’ home is a lovely place, filled with space memorabilia and, more important, family pictures and mementos, reflecting a sprawling clan that now stretches down to the great-grandchild generation. In the guest room where I was staying, there is one such especially sweet family artifact: one of Lovell’s own baby shoes, bronzed. The little foot that wore that shoe was, by history’s original plan, eventually meant to step on the moon. By history’s later plan, that achievement was denied.

For so ambitious a man, driven to such exploratory heights, the peace Lovell has made with the outcome of his mission is likely an equivocal peace, an uneasy peace.

There is, however, nothing equivocal about the way Americans in particular and history writ large view things. Lovell was the successful commander of a triumphantly successful mission. That historical reckoning comes not despite the fact that his fragile, fickle spacecraft denied him the chance to set foot on the moon, but because of it.

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13 min read

Apollo 13: Mission Details

Mission Objective

Mission highlights, backup crew, prelaunch milestones.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem…”

Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area. An explosion on board forced Apollo 13 to circle the moon without landing. The Fra Mauro site was reassigned to Apollo 14.  

At 5 1/2 minutes after liftoff, John “Jack” Swigert, Fred Haise and James Lovell felt a little vibration. Then the center engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining four engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in orbit.

Days before the mission, backup lunar module pilot, Charles Duke, inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly had no immunity to measles and was replaced by backup command module pilot, John “Jack” Swigert.

Ground tests before launch indicated the possibility of a poorly insulated supercritical helium tank in the lunar module, or LM, descent stage, so the flight plan was modified to enter the LM three hours early in order to obtain an onboard readout of helium tank pressure.

The No. 2 oxygen tank, serial number 10024X-TA0009, had been previously installed in the service module of Apollo 10, but was removed for modification and damaged in the process. The tank was fixed, tested at the factory, installed in the Apollo 13 service module and tested again during the Countdown Demonstration Test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center beginning March 16, 1970. The tanks normally are emptied to about half full. No. 1 behaved all right, but No. 2 dropped to only 92 percent of capacity. Gaseous oxygen at 80 pounds per square inch was applied through the vent line to expel the liquid oxygen, but to no avail. An interim discrepancy report was written, and on March 27, two weeks before launch, detanking operations resumed. No. 1 again emptied normally, but No. 2 did not. After a conference with contractor and NASA personnel, the test director decided to “boil off” the remaining oxygen in No. 2 by using the electrical heater within the tank. The technique worked, but it took eight hours of 65-volt DC power from the ground support equipment to dissipate the oxygen. Due to an oversight in replacing an underrated component during a design modification, this turned out to severely damage the internal heating elements of the tank.

Apollo 13 was to be the third lunar landing attempt, but the mission was aborted after rupture of service module oxygen tank. Still, it was classified as a “successful failure” because of the experience gained in rescuing the crew. The mission’s spent upper stage successfully impacted the moon.

During the first two days, the crew ran into a couple of minor surprises, but generally Apollo 13 was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. At 46 hours, 43 minutes Joe Kerwin, the capsule communicator, or Capcom, on duty, said, “The spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We’re bored to tears down here.” It was the last time anyone would mention boredom for a long time.

At 55 hours, 46 minutes, as the crew finished a 49-minute TV broadcast showing how comfortably they lived and worked in weightlessness, Lovell said, “This is the crew of Apollo 13 wishing everybody there a nice evening, and we’re just about ready to close out our inspection of Aquarius and get back for a pleasant evening in Odyssey. Good night.”

Nine minutes later, oxygen tank No. 2 blew up, causing the No. 1 tank to also fail. The command module’s normal supply of electricity, light and water was lost, and they were about 200,000 miles from Earth.

The message came in the form of a sharp bang and vibration at 9:08 p.m. April 13. Swigert saw a warning light that accompanied the bang and said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Lovell came on and told the ground that it was a main B bus undervolt.

Next, the warning lights indicated the loss of two of three fuel cells, which were the spacecraft’s prime source of electricity. With warning lights blinking, one oxygen tank appeared to be completely empty and there were indications that the oxygen in the second tank was rapidly depleting.

Thirteen minutes after the explosion, Lovell happened to look out of the left-hand window and saw the final evidence pointing toward potential catastrophe. “We are venting something out into the… into space,” he reported to Houston. Capcom Jack Lousma replied, “Roger, we copy you venting.” Lovell said, “It’s a gas of some sort.” It was oxygen gas escaping at a high rate from the second, and last, oxygen tank.

The first thing the crew did, even before discovering the oxygen leak, was try to close the hatch between the CM and the LM. They reacted spontaneously, similar to a submarine crew, closing the hatches to limit the amount of flooding. First Swigert, and then Lovell, tried to lock the reluctant hatch, but the stubborn lid wouldn’t stay shut. Exasperated and realizing that there wasn’t a cabin leak, they strapped the hatch to the CM couch.

The pressure in the No. 1 oxygen tank continued to drift downward; passing 300 pounds per square inch, then headed toward 200 pounds per square inch. Months later, after the accident investigation was complete, it was determined that when the No. 2 tank blew up, it either ruptured a line on the No. 1 tank or caused one of the valves to leak. When the pressure reached 200 pounds per square inch, the crew and ground controllers knew they would lose all oxygen, which meant that the last fuel cell also would die.

At one hour, 29 seconds after the bang, Lousma said after instructions from Flight Director Glynn Lunney, “It is slowly going to zero, and we are starting to think about the LM lifeboat.” Swigert replied, “That’s what we have been thinking about too.”

Ground controllers in Houston faced a formidable task. Completely new procedures had to be written and tested in the simulator before being passed up to the crew. The navigation problem had to be solved; essentially how, when and in what attitude to burn the LM descent engine to provide a quick return home.

With only 15 minutes of power left in the CM, Lousma told the crew to make their way into the LM. Haise and Lovell quickly floated through the tunnel, leaving Swigert to perform the last chores in the command module. The first concern was to determine if there were enough consumables to get home. The LM was built for only a 45-hour lifetime and it needed to be stretch to 90. Oxygen wasn’t a problem. The full LM descent tank alone would suffice. In addition, there were two ascent-engine oxygen tanks and two backpacks full of oxygen that would never be used on the lunar surface. Two emergency bottles on top of those packs each had six or seven pounds in them. At LM jettison just before re-entry 28.5 pounds of oxygen remained, more than half of what was available after the explosion.

Power also was a concern. There were 2,181 ampere hours in the LM batteries. Ground controllers carefully worked out a procedure where the CM batteries were charged with LM power. All noncritical systems were turned off and energy consumption was reduced to 1/5, which resulted in having 20 percent of LM electrical power left when Aquarius was jettisoned. There was one electrical close call during the mission. One of the CM batteries vented with such force that it momentarily dropped off the line. Had the battery failed, there would have been insufficient power to return the ship to Earth.

Water was the main consumable concern. It was estimated that the crew would run out of water about five hours before Earth re-entry, which was calculated at around 151 hours. However, data from Apollo 11, which had not sent its LM ascent stage crashing into the moon as in subsequent missions, showed that its mechanisms could survive seven or eight hours in space without water cooling. The crew conserved water. They cut down to six ounces each per day, 1/5 of normal intake, and used fruit juices; they ate hot dogs and other wet-pack foods when they ate at all. The crew became dehydrated throughout the flight and set a record that stood up throughout Apollo: Lovell lost 14 pounds and the crew lost a total of 31.5 pounds, nearly 50 percent more than any other crew. Those stringent measures resulted in the crew finishing with 28.2 pounds of water, about 9 percent of the total.

Removal of carbon dioxide also was a concern. There were enough lithium hydroxide canisters, which remove carbon dioxide from the spacecraft, but the square canisters from the command module were not compatible with the round openings in the lunar module environmental system. There were four cartridges from the LM and four from the backpacks, counting backups. However, the LM was designed to support two men for two days and was being asked to care for three men for about four days. After a day and a half in the LM, a warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level. Mission control devised a way to attach the CM canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags, cardboard and to tape all materials carried on board.

One of the big questions was, “How to get back safely to Earth?” The LM navigation system wasn’t designed to help in this situation. Before the explosion at 30 hours, 40 minutes, Apollo 13 had made the normal midcourse correction, which would take it out of a free-return-to-Earth trajectory and put it on a lunar landing course. Now the task was to get back on a free-return course. The ground computed a 35-second burn and fired it five hours after the explosion. As they approached the moon, another burn was computed; this time a long five-minute burn to speed up the return home. It took place two hours after rounding the far side of the moon.

The command module navigational platform alignment was transferred to the LM, but verifying alignment was difficult. Ordinarily the alignment procedure uses an onboard sextant device, called the Alignment Optical Telescope, or AOT, to find a suitable navigation star. Then with the help of an onboard computer, it verifies the guidance platform’s alignment. However, due to the explosion, a swarm of debris from the ruptured service module made it impossible to sight real stars. An alternate procedure was developed to use the sun as an alignment star. Lovell rotated the spacecraft to the attitude Houston had requested and when he looked through the AOT, the sun was just where it was expected. The alignment with the sun proved to be less than 1/2 a degree off. The ground and crew then knew they could do the five-minute P.C. + 2 burn with assurance, cutting the total time of their voyage to about 142 hours. At 73 hours, 46 minutes into the mission, the air-to-ground transcript describes the event:

Lovell: OK. We got it. I think we got it. What diameter was it? Haise: Yes. It’s coming back in. Just a second. Lovell: Yes, yaw’s coming back in. Just about it. Haise: Yaw is in…. Lovell : What have you got? Haise: Upper-right corner of the sun…. Lovell: We’ve got it! If we raised our voices, I submit it was justified.

Flight Director Gerald Griffin, a man not easily shaken, recalled: “Some years later I went back to the log and looked up that mission. My writing was almost illegible, I was so damned nervous. And I remember the exhilaration running through me: My God, that’s the last hurdle – if we can do that, I know we can make it. It was funny because only the people involved knew how important it was to have that platform properly aligned.” Yet Griffin barely mentioned the alignment in his change-of-shift briefing – “That check turned out real well” is all he said an hour after his penmanship failed him.

The trip was marked by discomfort beyond the lack of food and water. Sleep was almost impossible because of the cold. When the electrical systems were turned off, the spacecraft lost an important source of heat. The temperature dropped to 38 degrees Fahrenheit and condensation formed on all the walls.

The most remarkable achievement of mission control was quickly developing procedures for powering up the CM after its long, cold sleep. Flight controllers wrote the documents for this innovation in three days, instead of the usual three months. The command module was cold and clammy at the start of power-up. The walls, ceiling, floor, wire harnesses and panels were all covered with droplets of water. It was suspected conditions were the same behind the panels. The chances of short circuits caused apprehension, but thanks to the safeguards built into the command module after the disastrous Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, no arcing took place. Lovell recalled the descent to Earth, “The droplets furnished one sensation as we decelerated in the atmosphere: it rained inside the CM.”

Four hours before landing, the crew shed the service module; mission control had insisted on retaining it until then because everyone feared what the cold of space might do to the un-sheltered CM heat shield. Photos of the service module showed one whole panel missing and wreckage hanging out, it was a mess as it drifted away. Three hours later, the crew left the lunar module Aquarius and then splashed down gently in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa.

After an intensive investigation, the Apollo 13 Accident Review Board identified the cause of the explosion. In 1965, the CM had undergone many improvements that included raising the permissible voltage to the heaters in the oxygen tanks from 28 to 65 volts DC. Unfortunately, the thermostatic switches on these heaters weren’t modified to suit the change. During one final test on the launch pad, the heaters were on for a long period of time. This subjected the wiring in the vicinity of the heaters to very high temperatures (1000°F), which have been subsequently shown to severely degrade teflon insulation. The thermostatic switches started to open while powered by 65 volts DC and were probably welded shut. Furthermore, other warning signs during testing went unheeded and the tank, damaged from eight hours of overheating, was a potential bomb the next time it was filled with oxygen. That bomb exploded on April 13, 1970 – 200,000 miles from Earth.

James A. Lovell Jr., Commander Fred W. Haise Jr., Lunar Module Pilot John L. “Jack” Swigert Jr., Command Module Pilot

John W. Young, Commander Charles M. Duke Jr., Lunar Module Pilot John L. “Jack” Swigert Jr., Command Module Pilot

Odyssey (CM-109) Aquarius (LM-7)

6/13/69 – S-IVB ondock at Kennedy 6/29/69 – S-II ondock at Kennedy 6/16/69 – S-IC ondock at Kennedy 7/7/69 – S-IU ondock at Kennedy

April 11, 1970; 1:13 p.m. CST Launch Pad 39A Saturn-V AS-508 High Bay 1 Mobile Launcher Platform-3 Firing Room 1

Altitude: 118.99 miles Inclination: 32.547 degrees Earth Orbits: 1.5 Duration: five days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds Distance: 622,268 miles

April 17, 1970 Pacific Ocean Recovery Ship: USS Iwo Jima

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Apollo 13: lessons from the successful failure.

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Apollo 13 is launched on April 11, 1970. (Photo: Wikipedia)

On April 11, it will have been forty-three years since the Apollo 13 lunar mission became one of the greatest death-defying adventures in history. Three astronauts, mission commander Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert, found themselves rocketing around the moon in a pair of joined vehicles, each with the interior space of a VW Beetle, almost no power, and no heat. As one of the supervisors at Mission Control in Houston said, "Not a good way to fly."

A little more than two days into the mission, the service module’s No.2 oxygen tank exploded, and No.1 tank failed as well; collateral damage from the explosion. The result: all three men "abandoned" the command module (CM) for the close confines of the lunar module (LM). The LM was intended for two men (Lovell and Haise) to use in their landing on the lunar surface and then their return to the command module. It wasn’t designed or built to be used extensively by three men, but Apollo 13’s crew had no other options.

As the history of the mission on the NASA website says: "Ground controllers in Houston faced a formidable task. Completely new procedures had to be written and tested in the simulator before being passed up to the crew. The navigation problem had to be solved; essentially how, when and in what attitude to burn the LM descent engine to provide a quick return home. "

As anyone who has seen the incredible movie Apollo 13 knows, one of the biggest challenges of the mission was making course corrections. For an incredible five minutes, Lovell and Haise fired the LM’s engines (never designed for this kind of navigational burn) and used the sun as a point of navigational alignment. The alignment with the sun proved to be less than .5 degrees off. At 73 hours, 46 minutes into the mission, the air-to-ground transcript describes the event:

Lovell: OK. We got it. I think we got it. What diameter was it?

Haise: Yes. It's coming back in. Just a second.

Lovell: Yes, yaw's coming back in. Just about it.

Haise: Yaw is in....

Lovell: What have you got?

Haise: Upper-right corner of the sun....

Lovell: We've got it! If we raised our voices, I submit it was justified.

Flight Director Gerald Griffin, a man not easily shaken, recalled: "Some years later I went back to the log and looked up that mission. My writing was almost illegible, I was so damned nervous. And I remember the exhilaration running through me: My God, that's the last hurdle -- if we can do that, I know we can make it. It was funny because only the people involved knew how important it was to have that platform properly aligned."

This astounding piece of flying was done under insane conditions: not only were Lovell and Haise using equipment not designed for the purpose, they were doing it without proper food (without power, the crew couldn’t heat anything, and all three men skipped meals) and with a severe lack of sleep — with most of the electrical systems turned off, the spacecraft’s temperature dropped to 38 degrees Fahrenheit and condensation formed on all the walls.

As NASA’s site says, "The most remarkable achievement of mission control was quickly developing procedures for powering up the CM after its long, cold sleep. Flight controllers wrote the documents for this innovation in three days, instead of the usual three months."

Using those procedures, Swigert and Lovell powered up the command module, and Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific on April 17, 1970.

The mission was almost immediately dubbed a “successful failure” — a failure since it never achieved its prime objective of landing on the moon. Successful because almost every single person who worked for NASA pulled together in an astounding feat of teamwork to save the crew. As Fred Haise said in an interview with CBS News, “We had to have Plan B’s and C’s and D’s and on and on.” Hundreds of people in Mission Control refused to fail and did whatever they had to do to give Apollo 13 its Plan B’s, C’s, and D’s.

What are the leadership lessons from Apollo 13’s successful failure?

Prioritize and Communicate — NASA didn’t worry about anything other than saving the crew. The lunar landing objective was abandoned within minutes of the initial explosion. And everyone on the gigantic NASA team understood it.

Experience Takes Experience — There’s no substitute for hours and hours of actually doing something. It’s the best preparation for catastrophe. NASA’s people had been in the lunar-landing business for 9 years when the explosion occurred aboard Apollo 13.

Training is the Next Best Thing — There are things you can’t experience until they happen. But you can run simulations and training exercises. NASA trained and trained and trained. (My brother was in the U.S. Navy and once told me about the harsh conditions under which sailors were trained to fight shipboard fires. I was astounded. But the one time he had to fight a major fire aboard ship, he and every other sailor fell right into doing the things they had been trained to do. The fire was extinguished and no one got hurt.)

The Apollo 13 crew aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, following splashdown in the South Pacific. April 17, ... [+] 1970. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Assess and Manage Risk — When you are doing something as risky as sending people in sealed containers attached to explosives into space, you’d better have pretty darn good risk management techniques. NASA had to adjust on the fly (pun intended) during Apollo 13, but many of its improvisations were worked out in advance because NASA had done a good job of identifying many of its risks.

I had the privilege of meeting Jim Lovell soon after the movie Apollo 13 came out in 1995. He was doing a speaking tour, usually to business audiences, about the kinds of things I mentioned above. Lovell is a rare creature: a true American hero. He’s funnier, cooler, more attractive, and braver than the movie star who played him in the movie. (I bet Tom Hanks would be the first person to agree with me on that.) At the time of the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell was America’s No. 1 pilot — he’d been in space more often than anyone else and still is the only man to travel to the moon twice.

According to his book, Lost Moon , as Apollo 13’s capsule landed in the ocean and the astronauts saw water running down the outside of their portholes, Lovell quietly pronounced the end of the successful failure: “Fellows, we’re home.”

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The third mission planned by the United States to land astronauts on the Moon was Apollo 13, which launched on April 11, 1970. The mission nearly ended in tragedy. An explosion and power failure partially disabled the spacecraft’s command module, Odyssey , as it neared the Moon. The astronauts were able to employ their lunar module, Aquarius , as a temporary lifeboat, however, and return safely to Earth.

The Apollo 13 astronauts were spacecraft commander James A. Lovell, Jr. , lunar module pilot Fred Haise, Jr. , and command module pilot John L. Swigert, Jr. Swigert had replaced scheduled pilot Ken Mattingly after Mattingly was exposed to measles just days before the launch.

The Saturn V launch vehicle of Apollo 13 lifted off from Cape Kennedy, Florida, at 2:13 pm EST on April 11, 1970. The spacecraft was first inserted into Earth orbit, then boosted into lunar trajectory by the Saturn rocket’s third stage. Transposition and docking of Odyssey and Aquarius were carried out. By early evening Apollo 13 was coasting toward the Moon on a path so accurate that the first planned course adjustment was canceled. Later, the craft was transferred to a “non–free-return” trajectory to facilitate the planned landing in the Fra Mauro region of the Moon. The transfer meant that, should no further propulsive maneuver be made during the flight, Apollo 13 would swing around the Moon and return toward Earth but would miss Earth by 2,950 miles (4,750 kilometers).

Sunday, April 12, passed without incident. Early on the evening of Monday April 13, nearly 56 hours into the flight, Lovell and Haise entered Aquarius and began checking systems. Suddenly a loud bang was heard, and electrical power failed in Odyssey . All three astronauts quickly gathered in Odyssey to attempt to determine what had happened. Noting problems in the main electrical systems, Haise and Lovell radioed Mission Control in Houston, Texas, with an ominous message.

Haise: Okay, Houston— Lovell: I believe we’ve had a problem here. Mission Control: This is Houston. Say again, please. Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a main B bus undervolt.

A routine flight had suddenly turned into one of the most exciting episodes in space history. Much later, the bang was discovered to have been an oxygen-tank explosion in Odyssey ’s service module. This created a shortage of oxygen for breathing and also disabled the three fuel cells that normally provided electricity and drinking water for the command module. Anxiety for the safety of the astronauts was felt all around the world. Millions of people remained glued to television and radio sets as the perilous journey unfolded.

With plans for a lunar landing abandoned, the astronauts transferred into the lunar module, Aquarius . It had sufficient power, oxygen, and water to sustain them while the crippled spacecraft swung around the Moon and returned toward Earth. The systems of the Odyssey —the only module that could reenter the Earth’s atmosphere—were shut down to conserve its emergency battery power. Early on the morning of Tuesday, April 14, as the spacecraft neared the Moon, Aquarius ’s engine was fired to put it into a free-return trajectory, so it could return to Earth. Then, as expected, Apollo 13 temporarily lost radio contact with Earth as it passed behind the Moon. As its path took it higher above the Moon than other Apollo missions, Apollo 13 set the record for farthest flight from Earth of 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers). Communication was soon reestablished when the craft emerged from behind the Moon. About this time the long-discarded Saturn third stage crashed into the Moon as planned, providing an artificial moonquake for scientists to study.

Some two hours later, Aquarius ’s engine was fired again to increase the spacecraft’s velocity, reduce its flight time by 10 hours, and assure a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean south of Samoa . On board the spacecraft oxygen stores remained sufficient, as did cooling water. The astronauts reduced their consumption of drinking water to six ounces per day and their consumption of electricity by 80 percent. However, carbon dioxide levels in the lunar module began to rise to dangerous levels as the spacecraft’s lithium hydroxide absorbers (which remove carbon dioxide from the air) became saturated. The air purifiers in the command module did not fit the Aquarius , so NASA engineers were forced to improvise a purification system. They radioed the astronauts detailed instructions on how to assemble a new purification system from materials available on the spacecraft, including cardboard, plastic bags, and duct tape. The hastily designed system worked well, keeping the carbon dioxide content of the air well below hazardous levels for the remainder of the mission.

A further course correction was made on the morning of Wednesday, April 15. The adjustment was successful, and the flight wore on. The temperature in the lunar module had dropped to 38 °F (3 °C). The cold, weary astronauts slept fitfully between receiving instructions on spacecraft separation and reentry maneuvers they would soon undergo upon approaching Earth.

Preparing to reenter Earth’s atmosphere, the astronauts first discarded the service module, taking valuable photographs of the damaged section as it separated. They then transferred into the command module and discarded the lifesaving Aquarius , which could not return to Earth. The command module entered the atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17, 142 hours, 54 minutes, and 41 seconds after the mission began. A recovery team from the aircraft carrier USS Iwo Jima picked up the astronauts, and they were flown to Hawaii to meet their families. President Richard Nixon , on his way to visit the Apollo 13 crew, stopped in Houston to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the country’s highest civilian award, to the entire Mission Control team.

In the wake of the near-disaster, NASA appointed a review board under the leadership of Edgar M. Cortright, director of Langley Research Center, to investigate the Apollo 13 accident. After some two months of study, the board traced the cause of the explosion to two protective thermostatic switches in an oxygen-tank heater assembly, which were found to be inadequate. Dysfunction of the switches under load caused overheating that led to an insulation fire. The subsequent blast tore a side panel from the service module and disabled the fuel cells. Other defects in manufacture and in testing procedures were also found. Further Apollo flights were delayed until 1971 so that modifications could be made to prevent similar incidents. In 1995 Apollo 13 , a feature-length motion picture of the mission starring Tom Hanks , was released.

Additional Reading

Hasday, Judy L. The Apollo 13 Mission (Chelsea House, 2001). Holden, Henry M. Danger in Space: Surviving the Apollo 13 Disaster (Enslow, 2013). Lovell, Jim, and Kluger, Jeffrey. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Hodder, 2015). Pierce, Alan. Apollo 13 (ABDO Daughters, 2005).

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‘apollo 13’ an accurate depiction of 1970 lunar mission.

AP photo Apollo 13 astronauts Fred W. Haise, James A. Lovell and John L. Swigert, left to right, leave a helicopter to step aboard carrier Iwo Jima in the Pacific ocean after their successful recovery on Friday, April 17, 1970.

Failure was not an option. With the lives of three American astronauts hanging in the balance, America, and the world, watched as flight controllers and the crew worked to overcome the many problems of the April 1970 space flight of Apollo 13. The real-life drama became a full-length motion picture in 1995.

Though focused primarily on NASA’s third manned lunar-landing mission,

“Apollo 13” captures history and the mood of the nation in 1970 as the space agency worked for the safe return of the astronauts following an onboard explosion. The film was adapted from the book, “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13,” by former astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

Opening with the tragic Jan. 27, 1967 fire aboard Apollo 1 during pre-flight testing that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, “Apollo 13” transitions to July 20, 1969 at the Houston home of Jim and Marilyn Lovell and live news coverage of Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong as he becomes the first man to walk on the Moon.

Lovell (Tom Hanks), a veteran astronaut, had flown in Gemini 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8 (the first manned mission to orbit the Moon). He was slated to be Mission Commander of Apollo 14, but his crew was bumped up in the rotation.

After months of intense training, Lovell and his crew, including Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), are ready for the journey to the Fra Mauro Formation. Two days before launch, Mattingly is grounded because of exposure to rubella. His replacement, Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), is quickly brought up to speed.

Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970. Two days into the mission, an oxygen tank explosion in the service module (SM) changed the flight plan from a lunar landing to survival. With the command/service module (CSM) oxygen supply venting into space, the crew transferred guidance information to the lunar module (LM) computer. For the remainder of the mission, the LM would serve as the crew’s lifeboat in space.

Flight controllers in Houston met with White Team Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) to discuss options for the safe return of the crew. The team concluded a free-return-to-Earth trajectory was the safest solution. The crippled spacecraft would make one pass into lunar orbit and slingshot around on its path back home with the aid of a few engine burns for course correction.

With CSM systems completely shut down, the crew, now in the LM, works with Mission Control to overcome several problems including control of the spacecraft itself. To conserve electrical power in the LM, the crew had to endure dark, damp and extremely cold conditions for several days. NASA engineers at Mission Control also had to solve the problem of saturated carbon dioxide filters on the LM.

While the crew and flight controllers overcame numerous situations, Mattingly, who had not contracted the measles, was summoned to create a power-up procedure for the command module (CM) to allow a safe re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. Mattingly perfected the sequence in the flight simulator and later relayed the information to the flight crew while serving as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) at Mission Control.

The story is told from three points of view: the Apollo 13 crew in space, Mission Control flight controllers and the Lovell family. Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) must deal with her children (three at home and a son at military school), her mother-in-law (a recent stroke victim) and frequent visits from NASA representatives as she periodically listens to mission communication via a squawk box installed in the Lovell home.

Throughout the saga, actual 1970 news reports from the national TV networks are revived as the crew’s families stay informed with constant updates. Footage includes Chet Huntley, Jules Bergman, Walter Cronkite and former astronaut Wally Schirra.

The film stayed mainly true to life. There were a few scenes with enhanced dialogue for dramatic effect, but overall, the film is an accurate portrayal of events. Director Ron Howard pushed for technical authenticity and had NASA’s cooperation. The spacecraft (including interiors), simulators and Mission Control sets were all built to specification with meticulous detail. Cast members, including astronauts and flight controllers, participated in special training prior to filming. To replicate weightlessness in space, many scenes were shot onboard NASA’s KC-135, a specially-designed aircraft used for performing zero-gravity maneuvers. Howard also chose not to use NASA stock footage of the launch and other sequences, instead using computer-generated visuals that were perfect reproductions of the real thing.

The Apollo 13 mission was termed a “successful failure” for the safe return of the crew despite the aborted Moon landing. The film version tells the story and is worth watching again and again.

Tom Laub is the Lifestyles Editor of The Sentinel.

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College of Engineering

Working out the problems of apollo 13.

50 years later, two Georgia Tech engineering alumni reflect on their experience in Apollo 13’s mission control

 “Houston we’ve had a problem” – we all know those infamous words that were transmitted from the crew of Apollo 13 back to mission control at 02:07:55:35 into the flight that took off on April 11, 1970. The mission that was later called a “successful failure” had captured the attention of the entire world, as three astronauts were suddenly in a critical state of danger.  Something had gone terribly wrong onboard the spacecraft and suddenly the mission objective quickly changed from landing on the moon for scientific exploration to finding a way to get these astronauts home safely to Earth.

There was much uncertainty.  At approximately 56 hours into the mission on their way to the moon, the crew reported a “pretty large bang” after a routine stir of an oxygen tank followed by a caution/warning alarm.  It seemed that the command service module was losing power and oxygen fast but there was no determined reason why.  It was very clear though after monitoring the situation for a short time that the command service module was severely damaged and out of commission.  Fortunately, the crew had already docked to the lunar module before the accident occurred so it was determined that the crew would have to move into the lunar module and use it as a lifeboat to get the majority of the way back home. 

We recently talked to two flight controllers who were among the mission control team in Houston tasked with finding a way to get these astronauts home.  Spencer Gardner graduated from Georgia Tech with an aerospace engineering degree in 1967 and joined NASA soon after.  He was a Flight Activity Officer (FAO) for the Apollo missions which involved working on on-board flight plans, crew checklists, and being responsible for the data file that was carried on-board by the crew.  Jack Knight graduated from Georgia Tech with an electrical engineering degree in 1965. He was a Telemetry, Electrical, EVA Mobility Unit (TELMU) officer on all of the Apollo missions and monitored the lunar module electrical and environmental systems.

Gardner: “I was supposed to work the lunar descent phase of the mission and I had gone off shift probably eight or 10 hours before the accident happened.  I was sitting at home watching television when a report came out about an issue with the spacecraft.  So, I called my backroom and asked what was going on, and the FAO on duty said, ‘We’re not going to land and you better get some sleep because you guys are going to have a hard time trying to re-work what’s going to happen.’ So, I immediately crawl into bed and about 30 minutes later I get a phone call that says, ‘This is much more serious, and you better get over here.’ Fortunately, I lived right across the street from the center and was able to join the meeting that Gene Kranz had in the backroom with all those folks he pulled together to try to work the problem.”

Knight: “For me the most stressful time is when you have a lot of uncertainty. And a lot of the uncertainty happened very early.”

Gardner: “The most stressful time for me was when I first walked into mission control and all that was going on and nobody really knew what the heck was happening for sure.  But when you start working the problem and pull things together, it becomes less and less stressful because you’re now concentrating on the problem.  We were trained to deal with that pressure and stress and concentrate on working the problem that was presented.”

After flight director Gene Kranz gathered everyone together for a meeting, it was determined that the best option was to have the spacecraft continue its journey to orbit the moon, then make a free-return trajectory back to earth minimizing the use of power onboard.  A propulsion burn would be needed though on the way back to speed the return to Earth by 10 hours in order to splash down in the Pacific Ocean rather than the Indian Ocean.

Jack Knight was scheduled to work his post at mission control once the lunar module was powered up and being used for the lunar landing, however, circumstances had drastically changed.  The lunar module would now be the living quarters and control center of the spacecraft for most of the remainder of the mission.  The crew had to work fast to transfer guidance data from the command module to the lunar module and shut down the command module to leave enough power for reentry to Earth later.

Knight: “We had two basic problems in my systems area with respect to the lunar module.  The first problem was carbon dioxide removal.  The second problem was how long was it going to take because we had limited battery power and water inside the lunar module. Early on until we got around the moon, the flight directors really needed to keep the lunar module at a fairly high-power mode to maintain the knowledge of where we were in space because the command service module was down at that point. The crew had copied all the data over when the lunar module was powered up and it had to stay that way for a while.  Once we got around the moon and made a burn to speed things up, we went into a power down.  We got power down to about 300 watts, and at that point, consumable wise, they could make it.  So, if nothing else bad happened from the lunar module perspective, we could make it.  And then it was a matter of monitoring.”

Gardner: “One of the things that my group was concerned with was helping guidance have the ability to sight on the stars.  The crew used the sun in this whole process.  We had to figure out where we were and confirm what the guidance system was saying. The other thing that we were involved in was trying to set up the passive thermal control which was important because we wanted to make sure the spacecraft didn’t get heated or cooled too much on one side.  This was very difficult to do with a minimal amount of energy expenditure and without a computer after the power down.”

Knight: “After the power down, the spacecraft started to get cold.  The command module batteries had been partially depleted, so we were very nervous about when we had to power back up.  They had to delay power up as much as possible.”

An additional problem was the astronauts now had a very limited amount of drinking water onboard because of the accident that occurred in the service module.  To conserve water for the remainder of the mission, each astronaut would only drink 0.2 liters of water per day.  Astronaut Fred Haise developed a urinary tract infection during the mission probably caused by the reduced water intake and the three astronauts lost a total of 31 pounds among them by the end of the mission.

Gardner: “Drinking water was normally produced when hydrogen and oxygen were combined to make electricity for the command module.  Therefore, the astronauts would have plenty of water in a normal situation.  But in this case, the water was gone, and the only source of water was the limited supply in the lunar module.”

Knight: “I think people knew immediately that the Co2 was going to be a problem – but it wasn’t a ‘this minute’ problem.  It was going to be a problem when you ran out of the lithium hydroxide cartridges in the lunar module.  But they had time to work on that.  They had to figure out how can we take these square cartridges from the command module and run air through them in the lunar module.”

After a mid-course correction burn was completed manually and the CO2 problem had been solved, the crew was now approaching Earth and needed to power up the command module again to prepare for re-entry.  This meant the command module had to separate from the lunar module (the lifeboat spacecraft) and the service module (where the technical failure had occurred).  When the command module separated from the service module, the crew could see through the window that an entire panel had been blown off the service module. It was clear that a large explosion and much damage had occurred which brought another question that was out of everyone’s control: Was the heat shield damaged?

Knight: “The entry corridor is, if I remember correctly, 40 miles wide and 10 miles high at a certain altitude.  And you need to be in that entry corridor to have them come down at the right place at the right time, and not either skip our or burn up.  So, until they came out of blackout, I’m sitting there with my fingers crossed – I’m sure everybody else was too.”

Blackout took roughly two minutes longer than normal which added to the stress of those watching on Earth, but suddenly the most “beautiful” sight appeared in the sky. Three large parachutes had opened, slowly carrying down the command module to the Pacific Ocean, just 3.5 nautical miles from a rescue aircraft carrier - they had made it safely back to Earth.

Gardner:   “You had spacecraft that were not supposed to be together, controlled by the lunar module which was not supposed to control the stack, and you’re doing not only that long burn but you’re doing this mid-course correction that was essentially done manually which was unlike anything the crew had ever practiced.  And, the crew had to essentially learn to do these things as they were doing them.”

After Apollo 13, Jack Knight continued on with NASA working on the remaining Apollo missions, Skylab, ASTP, and shuttle missions until he retired in 2006.  Spencer Gardner worked in mission control for the remaining Apollo missions other than 17 and eventually became a lawyer and still practices today.

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Movie Reviews

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There is a moment early in "Apollo 13" when astronaut Jim Lovell is taking some press on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, and he brags that they have a computer "that fits in one room and can send out millions of instructions." And I'm thinking to myself, hell, I'm writing this review on a better computer than the one that got us to the moon.

"Apollo 13" inspires many reflections, and one of them is that America's space program was achieved with equipment that would look like tin cans today. Like Lindbergh, who crossed the Atlantic in the first plane he could string together that might make it, we went to the moon the moment we could, with the tools that were at hand.

Today, with new alloys, engines, fuels, computers and technology, it would be safer and cheaper - but we have lost the will.

"Apollo 13" never really states its theme, except perhaps in one sentence of narration at the end, but the whole film is suffused with it: The space program was a really extraordinary thing, something to be proud of, and those who went into space were not just "heroes," which is a cliché, but brave and resourceful.

Those qualities were never demonstrated more dramatically than in the flight of the 13th Apollo mission in April 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon. The three astronauts on board - Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert - were faced with the possibility of becoming marooned in space. Their oxygen could run out, they could be poisoned by carbon dioxide accumulations, or they could freeze to death. If somehow they were able to return to the Earth's atmosphere, they had to enter at precisely the right angle.

Too steep an entry, and they would be incinerated; too shallow, and they would skip off the top of the atmosphere like a stone on a pond, and fly off forever into space.

Ron Howard's film of this mission is directed with a single-mindedness and attention to detail that makes it riveting. He doesn't make the mistake of adding cornball little subplots to popularize the material; he knows he has a great story, and he tells it in a docudrama that feels like it was filmed on location in outer space.

So convincing are the details, indeed, that I went back to look at "For All Mankind," the great 1989 documentary directed by ex-astronaut Al Reinert , who co-wrote "Apollo 13." It was an uncanny experience, like looking at the origins of the current picture.

Countless details were exactly the same: the astronauts boarding the spacecraft, the lift-off, the inside of the cabin, the view from space, the chilling sight of their oxygen supply venting into space, even the little tape recorder floating in free-fall, playing country music.

All these images are from the documentary, all look almost exactly the same in the movie, and that is why Howard has been at pains to emphasize that every shot in "Apollo 13" is new. No documentary footage was used. The special effects - models, animation, shots where the actors were made weightless by floating inside a descending airplane - have re-created the experience exactly.

The astronauts are played by Tom Hanks (Lovell), Bill Paxton (Haise) and Kevin Bacon (Swigert). The pilot originally scheduled for the Apollo 13 mission was Ken Mattingly ( Gary Sinise ), who was grounded because he had been exposed to the measles. The key figure at Houston Mission Control is Gene Kranz (Ed Harris). Clean-cut, crew-cut, wearing white collars even in space, the astronauts had been built up in the public mind as supermen, but as Tom Wolfe's book and Phil Kaufman's movie " The Right Stuff " revealed, they were more likely to be hot-shot test pilots (with the exception of John Glenn ) than straight arrows.

The movie begins with the surprise selection of Lovell's group to crew Apollo 13. We meet members of their families, particularly Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan), we follow some of the training, and then the movie follows the ill-fated mission, in space and on the ground. Kranz, the Harris character, chain-smoking Camels, masterminds the ground effort to figure out how (and if) Apollo 13 can ever return.

A scheme is dreamed up to shut down power in the space capsule and move the astronauts into the lunar exploratory module, as a sort of temporary lifeboat. The lunar lander will be jettisoned at the last minute, and the main capsule's weakened batteries may have enough power left to allow the crew to return alive.

Meanwhile, the problem is to keep them from dying in space.

A scrubber to clean carbon dioxide from the capsule's air supply is jerry-built out of materials on board (and you can see a guy holding one just like it in "For All Mankind"). And you begin to realize, as the astronauts swing around the dark side of the moon and head for home, that, given the enormity of the task of returning to Earth, their craft and equipment is only a little more adequate than the rocket sled in which Evil Knievel proposed to hurtle across Snake River Canyon at about the same time.

Ron Howard has become a director who specializes in stories involving large groups of characters: "Cocoon," " Parenthood ," " Backdraft ," " The Paper ." Those were all films that paid attention to the individual human stories involved; they were a triumph of construction, indeed, in keeping many stories afloat and interesting.

With "Apollo 13," he correctly decides that the story is in the mission. There is a useful counterpoint in the scenes involving Lovell's wife, waiting fearfully on the ground. (She tells their son, "Something broke on your daddy's spaceship, and he's going to have to turn around before he even gets to the moon.") But Howard adds no additional side stories, no little parallel dramas, as a lesser director might have.

This is a powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics. It's about men trained to do a job, and doing a better one than anyone could have imagined. The buried message is: When we dialed down the space program, we lost something crucial to our vision. When I was a kid, they used to predict that by the year 2000, you'd be able to go to the moon. Nobody ever thought to predict that you'd be able to, but nobody would bother.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Apollo 13 (1995)

135 minutes

Bill Paxton as Fred Haise

Ed Harris as Gene Kranz

Gary Sinise as Ken Mattingly

Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert

Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell

• William Broyles Jr

Directed by

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Crisis Management in the Film “Apollo 13” Essay (Movie Review)

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The film Apollo 13 (1995) depicts one of the most remarkable NASA missions. This mission is often referred to as a “successful failure” (Loftus). The flight to the Moon was called a failure as the astronauts never landed on it. However, it was also a success, as, despite major damage to the spaceship, all astronauts returned to the Earth in safety. The mission, as depicted in the movie, can also serve as an illustration of certain flaws and strengths in the crisis management strategy.

One of the response team’s major accomplishments lay in their compliance with some of the central principles of the National Incident Management System. The principle of unity of effort was followed to the fullest. This principle calls for the contribution of each member of the team to achieve a particular goal (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 3). The film shows that the crew and the team worked hard to develop ways to bring the astronauts home. The team head’s commitment to success was also instrumental in achieving this objective.

However, the principles of flexibility and standardization were followed only partially. For instance, the ground team and the astronauts were quite flexible as they set about developing new ways to address their challenges. They also received substantial training to solve various issues that arose. Nevertheless, there were periods when the crew and the team felt lost and even despaired. Communication (the way people communicated and the technological devices they used) was not very effective at times, which reveals flaws in people’s training. Finally, the risk management plan had various flaws, which means that standards were poorly crafted.

All in all, the mission can be considered a success, as people returned home despite major damage to the spaceship. The team and the crew were flexible enough and had trained to respond to many challenges. However, the stage of planning was a failure as the developers failed to consider all possibilities.

Works Cited

Loftus, Geoff. “Apollo 13: Lessons from the Successful Failure.” Forbes . 2013, Web.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “National Incident Management System.” FEMA . 2017, Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020, December 25). Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13". https://ivypanda.com/essays/crisis-management-in-the-film-apollo-13/

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IvyPanda . (2020) 'Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13"'. 25 December.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13"." December 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/crisis-management-in-the-film-apollo-13/.

1. IvyPanda . "Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13"." December 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/crisis-management-in-the-film-apollo-13/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13"." December 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/crisis-management-in-the-film-apollo-13/.

“HOUSTON, WE’VE HAD A PROBLEM HERE.”

12–18 April 1970

by Hamish Lindsay

The Mission Insignia for Apollo 13 showed the god Apollo, representing the Sun, riding his chariot across the surface of the Moon to symbolise the Apollo Project bringing back new knowledge from the Moon.

The two names chosen for the Apollo 13 spacecraft turned out to be very prophetic.

The Command Module was called Odyssey from Homer and Arthur C. Clarke�s fictitious works. Lovell liked the sound and felt it was going to follow the dictionary�s description of a long and eventful voyage.

The Lunar Module was called after the sign of the Zodiac and star constellation Aquarius , the water carrier, at times identified with Zeus pouring the waters of life down from the heavens. Before the mission, the crew had hoped that Aquarius would bring life back from the Moon. After the mission they were glad it did!

Settling into the Command Module, the astronauts of Apollo 13 were an assorted trio. Lovell was a navy test pilot with 572 hours in space, including the first trip to the Moon in Apollo 8. He had more time in space than any other human at the time. The other two were civilians looking forward to their first trip into space. Haise, a serious family man, had been a journalist turned naval aviator. He was recognised as a specialist on the Lunar Module, having spent fourteen months at Grumman, the factory building the spacecraft. He knew every switch, wire and connector in the spacecraft. Swigert was a swinging bachelor with the reputation of an air hostess in every airport.

Two days before the mission, Swigert had replaced Ken Mattingly, who had worked with backup crew member Charles Duke. Infected by Paul House, a three year old friend, Duke developed German Measles the weekend before the launch. As Mattingly was found to have no immunity to the disease, the doctors were afraid he might break out in a severe rash at the moment Lovell and Haise were on the Moon�s surface, when swollen fingers and sore muscles could have slowed him up, particularly in an emergency. Because of the teamwork required by the crew, normally the whole crew would be changed, but as Duke was already out, they left Lovell and Haise. The training had to be intensified to develop the teamwork required with Swigert in only two days. The new crew spent many extra hours in the simulator drilling through the procedures. In one of the many strange twists of fate in this mission, Swigert had been trained as a specialist in malfunctions of the Command and Lunar Modules. As NASA Administrator Dr Tom Paine pointed out: �Swigert practically wrote the book on spacecraft malfunctions.�

Ironically, Mattingly never did break out with Rubella.

Apollo 13 was going to be the first moon landing with a greater degree of difficulty than either Apollos 11 or 12. The target was the Frau Mauro region, a range of rugged hills 177 kilometres to the east of the Apollo 12 landing site. Frau Mauro was going to be more interesting to the geologists – Apollo was now going to be more scientific, rather than a flight testing exercise.

Sunday 12 April 1970 – LAUNCH

Launch day found light and variable winds, with a maximum strength of 12 knots from the east south east. Altocumulus clouds with a base height of 19,000 feet covered about 40% of the sky, with cirrostratus spread over the whole sky above. The temperature was 24°C and relative humidity 57%. A perfect launch day.

Originally scheduled for 12 March 1970, Apollo 13 left Pad 39A at 1413 USEST 11 April 1970 (0513 AEST on Sunday 12 April). There was trouble right away. Lovell: �At five and a half minutes after liftoff, Swigert, Haise, and I felt a little vibration. Then the centre engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining four engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third stage had to burn 9 seconds longer to put us into orbit. No problem; the S-IVB had plenty of fuel.�

Apollo 13 entered Earth orbit at 0525:39 AEST and went into a 185.7 by 183.9 kilometre orbit with period of 88.2 minutes and a speed of 28,053.2 kilometres per hour. Translunar injection was at 0754:47 AEST with a 5 minute 50.8 second burn and Apollo 13 was heading for the Moon at 26,600.4 kilometres per hour.

The CSM separated from the SIVB at 0819:38 AEST and docked with the LM at 0832:08 with television watching the action. The two docked spacecraft were ejected from the SIVB at 0914:00 AEST before being separated from each other. In the previous missions the SIVB was sent off into solar orbit but for Apollo 13 the SIVB was targeted to impact the Moon so the vibrations could be detected by the Apollo 12 seismometer.

Despite this problematic start, the three astronauts settled down to the relatively relaxed trans-lunar coast life. The peace of Sunday was broken by an agitated Swigert calling Houston. In the rush to replace Mattingly, he remembered he had not filed his Income Tax Return: �How do I apply for an extension?� he asked, �Things kinda happened real fast down there and I need an extension. I�m really serious....�

�You�re breaking up the room down here,� replied a laughing Joe Kerwin, but later Flight Director Glynn Lunney passed up the advice, �American citizens out of the country get a 60 day extension on filing, I assume this applies to you.�

Monday 13 April 1970

On Monday morning Capcom Joe Kerwin called, �The spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We are bored to tears down here.� This �boredom� was reflected in the world outside – a third lunar landing hardly drew any media attention, in fact all the American television networks ignored the special television show put on by the astronauts.

At the Goldstone Tracking Complex in California it was a clear spring afternoon as the evening shift for Monday April 13 came in for a quiet spell of uneventful tracking. Bill Wood , C Shift leader at the DSS-12 Pioneer Wing Station:

�Pioneer, the half Coyote, half German Shepherd station mascot greeted us at the gate as usual, before we took over tracking the signal from the Saturn IVB. Ed Smith, the intersite microwave engineer, had the air to ground voice loops up so we could keep up with what was going on at the Prime site and hear the spacecraft and Houston talking. Things were very quiet, even boring.�

It wasn�t long before this mood was to change, to change dramatically.

Tuesday 14 April 1970

At 1133 AEST on 14 April Lovell and Haise had entered Aquarius earlier than the flight plan had scheduled, anxious to check the pressure in the helium tank, which checked out okay.

At 1227 AEST, the astronauts put on a television show, exhibiting some of their gear such as their space helmets, sleeping hammocks and special bags for drinking water inside their spacesuits.

Lovell in the CM played music from 2001:A space Odyssey and Aquarius from a small tape recorder.

Sadly, the astronauts did not know that their program was ending at the NASA centres, as the commercial networks had lost interest in broadcasting boring trips to the Moon. Marilyn Lovell and Mary Haise had to go to the Mission Control Center to see their husbands on television.

At 1259 the astronauts finished their on-board production with: �This is the crew of Apollo 13 wishing everybody a nice evening, and we�re just about ready to close our inspection of Aquarius and get back for a pleasant evening in Odyssey . Goodnight.�

Lovell: �On the tapes I sound mellow and benign, or some might say fat, dumb, and happy. A pleasant evening indeed! Nine minutes later the roof fell in......�

As the astronauts were copying down a message from Houston, on a control panel just above them a yellow caution light glowed to indicate a low pressure in hydrogen tank #1 in the Service Module.

Back at Houston the same warning glared at EECOM Sy Liebergot from the sloping panel of his console. As he had been working on the contents of the tanks he wasn�t too concerned to see the light, as it could be a normal short-term situation. In the weightlessness of space the cryogenically stored gases could stratify into layers of different densities and give a false quantity reading, but to make sure, Liebergot told Capcom Jack Lousma to ask the astronauts to stir both the hydrogen tanks, using paddles operated by electric motors. Normally this stirring was performed each day after the sleep period, but Liebergot wanted an extra stir before they went to sleep as he had been having trouble reading the quantity in the oxygen tank #2, so he suggested they stir the oxygen tanks too.

Lousma: �Thirteen, we�ve got one more item for you when you get the chance. We�d like you to stir up your cryo tanks........�

Swigert answered �Okay, stand by� and at 1306:18 AEST flicked the switches labelled H 2 and O 2 FANS on to stir the contents of the hydrogen and oxygen tanks.

Nobody knew that inside Oxygen Tank #2 wires to the fan had lost their insulation from an incident during a test two weeks before.

Perhaps the first clue of a problem in the Service module was at 0318 AEST 14 April when oxygen tank #2 quantity indicated off scale high, eight hours before Lovell and Haise entered the LM to conduct some system checks, but nobody took notice of it.

But now, on board Odyssey , 322,000 kilometres from Earth, the relaxed complacency of the crew and ground teams around the world was to be suddenly interrupted when Swigert switched the fans on in the oxygen tanks.

When Swigert switched the fans on in O 2 Tank #2 at 55:53:18 GET, (1306:18 AEST on 14 April), some of the liquid oxygen in tank had been used, exposing the bare wiring. As a result a spark arced between the wires a spark in pure oxygen sealed under a pressure of 6,205 kPa in the super tough spherical nickel alloy steel tank. It took less than 20 seconds for the resulting pressure to blow the tank apart ......... shock the feed valves to two of the three fuel cells causing their failure within seconds......wreck the adjacent equipment in Bay 4 of the Service Module ........ and blow the external side panel out....... which clipped the main antenna as it hurtled out into space. Langley Research Center estimated the explosion was equivalent to 3.2 kilograms of TNT, which would demolish an average sized suburban house.

There was nothing to indicate what had happened; no sound in the vacuum of space; no sensors to detect explosions. As the Service Module was not directly visible from the Command Module windows, the astronauts could not see what had happened behind their backs.

Just a shudder from the spacecraft.

.) At Goldstone Tracking Station the prime receiver’s usually steady white “Signal in Lock” light suddenly blinked out and the alarms began their two-tone singing. The servo operator immediately switched to Program Track (antenna under computer control) and the receiver operators began trying to reacquire the signal but were only able to find a weak signal coming from the spacecraft. Alan Foster on the Honeysuckle Creek receivers remembers what it was like once the Moon had risen at the site: “The signal level dropped right down to about minus 140 db, I can remember struggling with it – it was pretty grim but we managed to keep in lock. They also went on to emergency voice and became hard to hear.” �Fred was still in the Lunar Module. Jack was back in the Command Module in the left hand seat. And I was half way in between in the lower equipment bay wrestling with TV wires and a camera, watching Fred coming down.� Haise was crawling through the tunnel from the Lunar Module when he saw the wall of the tunnel flex, and felt the jar from the explosion. He jumped when the master alarm suddenly howled in his headset, mixed with Swigert�s voice from the Command Module yelling about a panel alarm. �Now, before that, Fred being in the Lunar Module, had actuated a valve which normally gives us the same sound....... since he didn�t tell us about it, we all rather jumped. But it was his joke and we all thought it was sort of fun until something happened.� �It wasn�t me!� Haise threw back at Lovell�s inquiring expression as he instinctively dived for his couch in the Command Module. Swigert tried to slam the hatch shut behind him, thinking the jolt might have come from the Lunar Module being hit by something. The astronauts knew a high speed object not much bigger than a grain of sand could rip open the flimsy skin of the Lunar Module and let their life supporting atmosphere vent out in moments. Though Swigert wrestled with the hatch, it wouldn�t lock shut as it was misaligned. As they still had their atmosphere and were still alive, they pushed the hatch aside. All three astronauts� pulse rates shot up to over 130. �It is interesting to note that days later, just before we jettisoned the Lunar Module, when the hatch had to be closed and locked, Jack did it � easy as pie. That�s the kind of flight it was.� Swigert admitted, �It shook the spacecraft and scared the hell out of me. I proceeded to look at Jim and about the same time � I guess about two seconds had elapsed � when I had a master alarm and a main bus B undervolt light. I told Houston we had a problem and proceeded to go over to the right hand side of the spacecraft to look at the voltage�� He saw the B bus voltage supplying half the power to drive the spacecraft, drop right out. Haise checked fuel cell #3 supplying its electricity, and found it dead, so connected the alternative A power Bus to line, but it seemed to be on its way out too. A quick check of fuel cell #1 showed it was as dead as #3. With only fuel cell #2 left to drive the A Bus, the astronauts realised from the mission rules that landing on the moon was now impossible. At 1308 AEST Swigert called Houston with the now famous remark, �Okay, Houston, we�ve had a problem here.� Capcom Jack Lousma, �This is Houston � say again, please.� �Houston � we�ve had a problem. We�ve had a Main B Bus undervolt,� Lovell explained. �Roger. Main B undervolt. � Okay, stand by, Thirteen, we�re looking at it.� Capcom Lousma answered for the Mission Control team. In the Apollo 13 spacecraft, launched at 1313 hours (Houston time on Saturday, April 11), it was 9:08 pm on April 13. At Honeysuckle Creek it was 1308 hours (1:08 pm) on April 14. At Houston it was just after 2100 local on a pleasant clear evening. With three friends, Andy Saulietis had rigged up a telescope connected to a black and white television set on a roof of the Manned Spacecraft Center. They were studying a slowly fading pinpoint of light approaching the Moon � the Saturn IVB rocket following Odyssey , blinking as it tumbled along. While they watched, a bright spot appeared in the middle of the screen and over the next ten minutes grew into quite a bright ball. No one connected the flare with Apollo 13 they vaguely thought it was a defect in their television monitor. They left the rooftop quite oblivious to what they had witnessed � the oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploding, and in ten minutes spreading into a gaseous sphere over 48 kilometres wide, glowing in the sunlight. Inside the Mission Control Center none of the Flight Controllers sitting at their consoles were aware of what had happened either, until some of them began seeing abnormal indications coming down their telemetry channels � strange readings from temperatures, pressures, voltages, and the status of various pieces of equipment. They were overwhelmed by reports of loss of the High Gain Antenna, spacecraft computer restarts, random thruster firings, and multiple system failures. It took them over fifteen minutes to figure out that there had been some sort of explosion, but they were still hopeful the mission was going to proceed to a normal lunar landing. EECOM Sy Liebergot, the Flight Controller in charge of the Command and Service Module�s electrical and environmental systems, was now squarely in the hot seat: �Our data suddenly went ratty, some of it went static. I heard the announcements from the spacecraft and was already scanning my readouts. Nothing made sense. I called Kranz, �We may have an instrumentation problem, Flight. Let me go ahead and check,� which was my way of putting Kranz off, and he knew that.� �Rog.� Kranz replied. . Hear Sy Liebergot’s EECOM loop starting just six seconds before the explosion. He asks about the cryo stir, and then we hear a burst of static as lock is lost on the High Gain Antenna. We hear the team beginning to troubleshoot the problem. This recording is part of longer audio on a disc included with Sy’s book, “Apollo EECOM: Journey of a Lifetime” – . This audio clip is also available on . Used with kind permission of, and with thanks to, Sy Liebergot. 1.1MB mp3 / 2 minutes 12 seconds. Clip starts at 055:54:49GET. Liebergot never saw the pressure spike in the oxygen tank that caused the explosion: �You look away, you blink, and it�s gone. That�s exactly what happened. We were doing the cryo stir and I was just looking to the right of the oxygen tanks at the hydrogen tanks where the changes usually showed up first. Everybody was looking at the hydrogen, which was about two inches over. When I looked back the spike had already gone. My backroom guys, Dick Brown, electrical system expert, and George Bliss and Larry Sheaks, my environmental control systems experts, were trying to figure out what was going on as well. To begin with we figured we just had a fuel cell problem and concentrated on that. Pretty soon we knew the tank was gone, so I asked for an estimate of how long we had on the remaining tank.� Liebergot had little to work on, only displays of nearly fifty parameters all showing out of limit readings on his console. This was so sudden, without any warning, that he felt overwhelmed. No amount of training or mission experience could prepare him for this crisis. Initially he knew that the two dead fuel cells drew their oxygen from the same source, and as the third cell was still working, at first he didn�t suspect the oxygen tanks. He was working on a Fuel Cell #3 leak, and trying to isolate it. Also, he was still trying to figure out why two fuel cells would fail. Then he saw that oxygen tank #2 was showing empty. Its contents had all gone! Half the oxygen for the cabin atmosphere and the spacecraft power for the mission had gone in two minutes � just vanished. They hadn�t even reached the moon. All their training and simulations had always relied on backup systems to keep the mission going, nobody had been game enough to introduce a complete failure of all the power systems into the simulations. As one of the Flight Controllers said later, �This was so far down the line, if anyone had asked us to simulate it ahead of time we would all have said he was being unrealistic.� �I had all the feelings that went with not having the answers to the problem and not seeing any way out of it. It happened too quickly � it was a cascading failure which means the original failure got masked by the subsequent failures it created. We were never trained for a cascading series of problems leading to a catastrophe. That�s not training. It was like saying the structure of the spacecraft was going to fail.� A minute or so after the explosion Alan Glines, the communications engineer (INCO), reported to Kranz that the signal from the spacecraft had switched to the smaller omni antennas, which was probably due to the side panel hitting the big antenna on its way past. The weaker signal combined with the erratic behaviour of the spacecraft caused the receiver operators at Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek and the other stations difficulty in holding onto the weak, fluctuating signal for the rest of the mission. Then Lovell announced the voltage on the A Bus was beginning to drop. An uneasy silence fell on the voice loops� �Okay, Houston, are you still reading Apollo 13?� Lovell couldn�t contain his anxiety any longer. �That�s affirmative,� replied Lousma, �We are reading you. We�re trying to come up with some good ideas here for you.� He looked appealingly at Kranz: �What can I tell them?� Kranz did not have an answer. Nobody had an answer. Lovell couldn�t understand why his ship was reeling drunkenly about the heavens. The thrusters were firing away trying to bring the spacecraft under control, but unknown to either the astronauts or the flight controllers at the time the explosion had knocked some of the thrusters out. Lovell took over manual control, but found no matter how he tried, he could do no better than the automatic pilot � the spacecraft seemed to have a mind of its own, always trying to veer away from the course. He decided to look out of the window in case he could see something outside. As he swung himself onto the left seat and peered out, the sight that met his inquiring eyes formed a knot in his stomach � the sun was shining on a powerful stream of gas spurting out of the side of the Service Module. Sixteen minutes after the explosion, at 1322 AEST, Lovell remembers, �I happened to look out of the left hand window, and saw the final evidence pointing toward potential catastrophe. �We are venting something out into the ........ into space,� I reported to Houston.� �Roger, we copy you are venting,� acknowledged Lousma. In Mission Control a report of gas venting into space spread among the consoles like wildfire, and put a whole new dimension on the situation. Liebergot: �I ignored that, I couldn�t deal with that. I needed to go and find what I could do about it. � Fuel cell #2 was still producing electricity but when Lovell looked back at the oxygen pressures again Tank #2 was still reading zilch, but now Tank #1 was only half full, and dropping! They were going to lose all their oxygen � they weren�t going to have enough to bring the ship back home to Earth! This was it! Lovell knew they were in trouble. But how serious was it? Was it only oxygen gas squirting out into space? How long did they have? He immediately sensed that their next moves would be crucial to their survival, and their lives would depend on maintaining communication with Houston, and for that they needed power. There were only 15 minutes of battery power left in the Command Module, and that was needed for reentry into the Earth�s atmosphere. The Earth was over 90 hours away ................ Lovell: �The knot in my stomach tightened, and all regrets about not landing on the moon vanished. Now it was strictly a case for survival. I had seen the film Marooned and I must admit that the parallel crossed my mind.� He looked across to Haise, the LM expert and pilot, �We�re going to have to use Aquarius to get home.� Back in mission control, Liebergot also saw oxygen tank #1 contents disappearing before his eyes � the pressure dropping from 6,068 kPa down to 2,760 kPa in less than three minutes. Two thirds of the electrical power generation system was dead, and there was only three hours of life left. Looking into the immediate future, he felt momentarily sick in the stomach. He grabbed the security handles on his console to steady himself down. Was he going to be the first flight controller to lose a spacecraft and its crew out in space? �In all my life I have never felt so alone, as I did then. I didn�t have the answers. It seemed we were on the point of losing everybody and everything.� What had to be done before the Command Module completely died? Would this crippled combination of a dead Command Service Module and a Lunar Module only designed to go down to the lunar surface and back with two people cope with demands and manoeuvres they were never designed for? There was little time left to make any plans........ Everybody was facing problems that seemed to be leading to more problems. …… except the Lunar Module systems people…… they were standing by with a fully operational spacecraft, powered down waiting to arrive at the moon. It wasn�t long before they realised the Lunar Module was going to be involved. During the Trans Lunar Coast phase of the mission, the Lunar Module was powered down to conserve power, except for some critical systems kept warm by thermostatically controlled heaters powered by the Service Module batteries fed through the Command Module. Now they had lost the power to the relays that controlled the transfer of the power source to the Lunar Module batteries � so they could not turn the power on in the Lunar Module from its batteries in the descent stage. That was the first big problem to be overcome. Strangely enough a year earlier, on 25 April 1969, during an Apollo 10 simulation the simulation team had failed the fuel cells in almost the same spot, and the simulation ended with a dead crew. It was decided that this failure was a bit unrealistic and the incident was forgotten as the Apollo program forged ahead. Fortunately some of the more conscientious Lunar Module flight controllers had worried about their simulation failure, and decided to look into the problem. Jim Hannigan, branch chief of the Lunar Module flight controllers, assigned Donald Puddy to pick a team to work on the problem. Bill Legler, one of the key members of the team (who had been present during the Apollo 10 simulation) worked out some procedures that could reverse the power flow to go from the Lunar Module back into the Command Module and energise the power transfer relays. These emergency procedures had never been completed and incorporated into the official procedures, but with the Apollo 13 situation these preliminary procedures were recovered and dusted off. They gave the Lunar Module controllers a head start. The engineer in charge of the electrical and environmental systems of the Lunar Module was Bill Peters, �I had just unplugged from the console and only taken two steps away when Bob Heselmeyer called out �You�d better come back here, I think something�s going on.� I figured out pretty quickly it looked like a major disaster, and one of the plans in cases like this was to close all the telephone lines in and out of the Control Center so just in case I called my wife real quick and told her not to expect me home that night � turn on the TV to find out why � and hung up.� At the Goldstone tracking station a team was quickly formed to analyse the telemetry information they had just recorded, particularly the last few moments before the explosion. Bill Wood , lead USB Engineer: �We were able to read all bits up to signal loss by recording the data at a high speed of 60 inches per second and playing it back at 3� inches per second. Then we rolled the chart paper onto the control room floor and counted the frames of data by eye to find out what each parameter was reading up to the signal loss, and what things looked like right after the signal was reacquired. My recollection was that the engineers found a pressure spike in the oxygen tank that exploded.� The telemetry showed the pressure shot up to 6,950 kPa for two seconds before dropping to zero in the next two seconds. Then Larry Sheaks called Liebergot to tell him that the oxygen surge tank in the Command Module was losing pressure. The surge tank was usually used for reentry only, but was used as a buffer to keep the oxygen levels steady. The EECOM from Milt Windler�s Maroon shift, John Aaron, was quietly shaving at home when the phone shrilled. It was Arnold Aldrich, his office manager, at Mission Control. �Arnie said �Hey, John, these guys are working some kind of problem and I know your specialty is instrumentation patterns and they think this is a telemetry problem, but I don�t know.� So I said to Arnie, �Go and read me some parameters off displays such and such, then go to displays such and such and read those out to me. He did all that and I said �Arnie, that is not a telemetry failure – there is no pattern there that fits. Tell those guys they�ve got a real problem and I�ll be right there. By the time I came in, I got in on the tail end of analysing what had happened there, and started convincing the guys that they ought to power down the Command Module and save the batteries, because we were using battery power to troubleshoot the problem, and I knew these were the same batteries that were going to bring us home. That was pretty traumatic because the Command and Service Module was never designed to be powered down in space and we didn�t have any procedures to power it up from scratch. Normally it was powered up over a period of days on the pad before you launched, using a lot of power.� Forty six minutes after the explosion George Bliss informed Liebergot that there was only 1 hour 54 minutes left in O 2 Tank #1, when the last fuel cell would die. Then there would only be the Command Module�s reentry batteries left � and they were needed for reentry. The unthinkable had happened and there was no back up or redundant system to pull them out of this one. They were facing a major disaster in space. Liebergot announced on the intercom loop: �Flight, the pressure in O 2 tank 1 has dropped all the way down to 297 (psi) (2048 kPa) and we�d better think about getting into the LM.� Flight dynamics chief Jerry Bostick was sitting in the Trench listening to the drama deepening on the console behind him, and began to think of getting the spacecraft back as soon as possible. He and his team soon discarded the immediate turn-around (direct abort which would bring them home in 34 hours) using the main SPS engine because the LM �lifeboat� would have to be cast off, and doubt about the integrity of the Service Module � that is, how much damage had been done to the internal systems of the Service Module? Was the engine damaged? Even if it wasn�t, there was no electricity to operate the engine controls such opening or closing valves. The alternative was to carry on and sling around the Moon. This was going to take up to four days � could they keep the astronauts alive for such a long period? That was up to the LM systems controllers. The Trench waited for the Flight Directors to make up their minds. Ken Mattingly slid alongside Lousma and plugged his headset in. He wanted to help his mates if he could. Kranz said this was his toughest call on Apollo 13. �My team was pretty much split down the middle. Many of my systems controllers wanted to get home in the fastest fashion possible.� By now there were two teams gathered around the consoles discussing the emergency and the chatter was getting out of hand so Kranz stood up and yelled around the room, �Okay all flight controllers cut the chatter. I want every member of the White team to settle down and get back on the voice loops � the rest of you shut up.� Still damp from being called from a shower at home, Chris Kraft had arrived by now and joined the intercom conversation at his Director�s console, just before thirty three year old Glynn Lunney was due to take over the next shift. Leader of the Maroon team, Milt Windler, also joined the group. Lunney had been discussing the return options with Bostick and an intense discussion developed between the Flight Directors on the best course of action, ending with Kranz addressing Kraft, �Our only real option is to go around the Moon.� Kraft agreed, �When do you want to do the burn?� The decision was made, and the Flight Dynamics controllers in the Trench breathed a sigh of relief and began to work out a burn procedure for a trajectory to sling around the Moon and return home. So 53 minutes after the explosion, an emergency plan began to evolve. �I was already in a back room of the Control Center when we got the report that there was a problem. We were due on shift at about 10:00 pm (USCST) that night. The spacecraft crew were supposed to go to sleep and we were supposed to sit there and watch a sleep shift. I went in and plugged in with Gene; I knew the spacecraft crew had reported a bang and some venting, so there was a suspicion there was some kind of problem, but people still weren�t sure how serious the problem was. There were a set of confusing indicators – we had lost the oxygen in one tank so we lost the fuel cell that was plugged to it, and that fuel cell was plugged to the B electrical Buss. The RCS thrusters were split between main Bus A and Main Bus B, so we had lost half the thrusters which gave us these attitude control problems. We became involved in closing off the fuel cells, one at a time, to try to isolate a leak within the fuel cells, but once you shut them down, you can�t get them back, and I remember doing that as a last resort. We had a number of situations to deal with. We were on a non free-return trajectory. Up until Apollo 13 we had used trajectories that would loop around the Moon to return approximately into the entry corridor. Here we were not going to come back to any safe kind of Earth entry at all. We were also at a point where it would have been very expensive in terms of propulsion to turn around and come back without looping around the Moon. That was considered for a while, but the only way we knew how to do that was to dump the descent stage of the Lunar Module and use all of the Service Propulsion fuel, but the two problems with that were we couldn�t power the Service Module up any more, we were only down to batteries, so we couldn�t sustain a power load to run the Service Propulsion engine, and we didn�t want to dump the descent stage of the Lunar Module because it was our lifeboat where most of the batteries, water and so on were stored. Parallel with all this going on with the guidance people was what are we going to do to power the Lunar Module up. We knew we had to get it powered up enough to take care of the manoeuvre later, but we also began to realise that the way the telescope worked for aligning the platform in the Lunar Module that it probably wouldn�t work by itself while it was attached to the Command Module out in free space. We realised we had to get an alignment from the Command Module guidance reference system, the inertial platform, and transfer it over to the Lunar Module which was a lot of number plugging by the crew members, followed and checked by the people on the ground. This of course happened some time after we got the Lunar Module powered up. We got the Lunar Module powered up but as we went through it we were trying to figure out what we didn�t have to bring up because we knew we were going to be power limited and water coolant limited to get home. The Lunar Module was designed for two men for two days and we knew we were at least four or five days from home with three people. We knew we couldn�t stay powered up at these levels so we had to figure out a way to cut the power down. We also knew we had limited amounts of consumables on board. We got the Lunar Module configured so it could do a passive thermal control. Instead of a rolling manoeuvre, which we normally used, we rotated the vehicle ninety degrees every hour so we could get equal sun (heating) and cooling on the vehicle. As we could watch this on the ground the crew didn�t have to worry about it. Once we got in that position we said we�re on this non-free return, why don�t we trim that out and get the vehicle on a free return so if anything happens later we are least heading for the reentry corridor. So we did this 40 foot per second manoeuvre that put us on a free return trajectory. After that we began to try to take power off everything that we didn�t need and we began to lay out in detail the options for how big or small a manoeuvre we would do at seventy nine and a half hours into the mission, after we got around the Moon. We settled on a manoeuvre that wasn�t quite maximum but would get us back by about 142 hours. We had also figured out how to husband the consumables. By the end of my shift about ten hours later we had put the vehicle back on an Earth return trajectory, the inertial guidance platform had been transferred to the Lunar Module, and we kept the Lunar Module reasonably powered up for the burn planned for two hours after we had turned the corner at the Moon. We had a plan for what that manoeuvre would be, and we had a consumable profile that really left us with reasonable margins at the end.� Gene Kranz and his White Team continued their shift for an extra hour before handing over to Glynn Lunney and the Black Team, and went to the back of the building to study data from the spacecraft. Kranz decided to step out of the Houston shift sequence and head a Tiger Team to concentrate on the engineering and procedures to get the crippled spacecraft and its crew back home. �The key thing here was I didn�t form the Tiger Team – the Tiger Team to a great extent always existed. During the Apollo Program we flew with four mission control teams, and one team was always designated as the Lead Team and in case of any mission difficulties it was that team�s responsibility to establish the game plan, the recovery plan, do the trouble shooting and that just happened to fall into my team. We had many problems here – we had a variety of survival problems, we had electrical management, water management, and we had to figure out how to navigate because the stars were occluded by the debris cloud surrounding the spacecraft. Basically we had to turn a two day spacecraft into a four and a half day spacecraft with an extra crewmember to get the crew back home. We were literally working outside the design and test boundaries of the spacecraft so we had to invent everything as we went along. There were many lead people, but the three people I would name were Arnie Aldrich who handled the checklist, John Aaron with the power management, and Bill Peters who looked at the Lunar Module and tried to figure out how it could be most effective as a lifeboat.� There were no official procedures to refer to even the emergency procedures didn�t cover losing all three Command Module fuel cell power sources and using the Lunar Module in lieu of the Command Module. At 1456 AEST on 14 April Lovell and Haise had already decided to climb into the Lunar Module, �Without much discussion from the ground, both Jim and I decided to head for the LM. At this point we only had one choice and took it,� Haise explained. Swigert was left to wind down the Command Module. The last oxygen tank was nearly empty. Capcom Jack Lousma told the astronauts, �Thirteen, Houston. We�d like you to start making your way over to the LM now� Swigert replied: �Fred and Jim are in the LM.� Lovell had joined Haise in the LM, who was already throwing switches to bring the power up when Swigert yelled down the tunnel, �Houston wants the LM powered up.� Haise advised Houston, �.....and Jack, I got LM power on.� to . From 16mm NASA footage, screenshot by Colin Mackellar. Swigert said he had never seen the LM activated so fast, but it still wasn�t fast enough. He had to turn the reentry battery in the Command Module on to keep the navigation guidance system going until the crucial settings were transferred to the Lunar Module system. Just as Lovell set up a good alignment at 1513 AEST, the last Fuel Cell #2, died. Lovell: �Getting that transfer was the first big turning point.� . 395kb mp3. PAO commentary and air/ground audio. Starting at 058:00:02GET. Houston told Swigert to close the Command Module down. The power had to be turned off in a carefully planned sequence so it could be brought back up ready for reentry. At 1553 he turned off the last switch, looked around the lifeless cabin – no cosy lights, no friendly voices from the radio, no gurgling from pipes or whirring of fans their cheerful home of a moment ago was just dark and dead 333,125 empty kilometres from Earth, and racing away from it at 3,380 kilometres per hour! He floated into the Lunar Module, and said to Lovell and Haise, �It�s up to you now.� He suddenly felt lost. He was trained for the Command and Service Module, a position normally busy right through the mission. Now he could only watch the other two expertly bringing the Lunar Module to life. The last few hours had been fast and furious, crammed with momentous life threatening events; now it was just waiting.......... for what? Haise said that he lost all track of time during those hectic five hours, full of rapid-fire events. It was more like a dream than reality because of the jolt from the security of comfort and order to the onslaught of unexpected events and fleeting images and feeling very vulnerable to the hostile environment of empty space. Dead tired, he was the first to drag himself into the Command Module to sleep soundly for the next five hours. RIGHT ACROSS THE CONTINENT, FROM PERTH TO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA PITCHES IN TO HELP APOLLO 13. � I heard Swigert send his problem call, and then listened as the flight controllers sent a barrage of instructions up to the spacecraft, punctuated by terse responses from the astronauts. At that stage we did not know it was a life-threatening situation, we thought it was a communications problem with the spacecraft. The first indication of the seriousness of the crisis to us at Honeysuckle Creek was when Mission Control in Houston called the Operations Supervisor at Honeysuckle Creek and asked, �How long would it take to get Parkes up?� Parkes was the CSIRO�s radio telescope used during the Apollo 11 mission. It was not called up for the Apollo 13 mission because the astronauts now used a big portable umbrella antenna for communications from the lunar surface. I knew the situation was really serious as you don�t just casually ask to use the 64 metre radio astronomy antenna at Parkes without making high level arrangements with plenty of warning.� In Mission Control the low signal levels from the spacecraft were causing concern. Chris Kraft, Director of Flight Operations, �We wanted to make sure that we got a good telemetry signal, and Parkes was one of the places where we knew we could get it.� �Parkes isn�t committed to this mission,� Mike Dinn informed them. �Oh, then Mr Kraft will be calling your Director on the phone shortly, � Houston replied. Honeysuckle Creek Station Director Don Gray : �I was sitting in my office listening to this conversation on the net, and in moments the phone rang. Chris Kraft said to me �We have a serious problem on the spacecraft; it looks like we are going to have to power down and will need all the antennas we can get. Do what you can to get Parkes up as soon as possible.� First of all I called Tom Reid , the Director at Tidbinbilla, to organise a crew to go to Parkes, then I rang John Bolton at Parkes to find he was already aware of the problem and was prepared to change the antenna over to support the NASA signals.� At the Deep Space Station at Tidbinbilla the request took Station Director Tom Reid by surprise: �What are you talking about? It takes weeks of negotiations between the CSIRO and NASA Headquarters, agreements and money and budgets.� Then I got a black phone call , �Hey look, we�ve got a problem on board the spacecraft this is a serious thing, think again about how soon you can do it � never mind about budgets and money.� The contractor�s people responded magnificently, got themselves down to Parkes luckily the equipment was still there, it just wasn�t configured. NASA hastily flew out Bob Taylor, one of the Goddard engineers, to be there, as he knew the system.� Dr. John Bolton , Director of Parkes : �I was listening to the conversation between Houston and James Lovell, and as had been my habit, had thoroughly digested the flight plan. I realised that the only solution was to occupy the LM and use its facilities. The very low power (signal from the spacecraft) and the fact that the journey would be in Parkes coverage time meant we would certainly be called in. I rang Tom Reid, the Director of Tidbinbilla, with whom I had an excellent relationship, to ask for the NASA crew to be sent in; I rang Taffy (Dr. E.G. Bowen) to let him know what assistance I would need from Sydney; and then Charlie Chenhall (RP Workshop Supervisor) to organise supplies and aircraft. Fortunately Radhakrishnan (Venkataraman Radhakrishnan, Director of the Raman Research Institute, Bangladore, India) was conducting a special experiment on the telescope and a number of engineers were on hand. They dismantled and carried Rad�s equipment down the ladder of one of the feed legs, while Parkes staff used the lift to get the NASA gear to the focus. We accomplished in 10 hours what normally took close to a week.� Bruce Window , Tidbinbilla USB Supervisor: �It was about 6 pm. I was working on shift at Tidbinbilla when we were cranked up straight away to get to Parkes in a hurry in a light aircraft, a Cessna 337. It was a hairy trip. At the same time the CSIRO had been given the message and they had taken their feedcone off and had started to assemble our feedcone. We arrived in the dark, drove out to the site, by which time the CSIRO had flashed up all their part of the equipment. On that first day we had got the voice but we hadn�t got all the links through to Honeysuckle. I can remember holding the cable and shouting in frustration, I had the stuff in my hand but I couldn�t do anything with it! Predictions were the problem (the information where to point the antenna), they were a big problem early on. We just had to rely on predictions from NASA. John Bolton and his boys had to work around them as much as they could. We didn�t get any really good data from Parkes that first night. They were relying heavily on us because of the improved quality of signal they were able to up the bit rate by one step with our signal from what they were getting from the 26 metre dishes (such as Honeysuckle) that was why they needed us at Parkes. We worked 16 hour days.� Kevyn Westbrook , Officer in Charge of the Deakin Switching Centre in Canberra: �I was relaxing at home when I had a phone call from the shift supervisor at the time to say there was a problem, so I immediately went in to find that Apollo 13 really was in trouble. Next there was a call from the Network Manager in the United States to say they wanted two things immediately they wanted to activate the lines to Parkes, and the second one, which was a bit more difficult, was to get some kind of broadband communication between the Carnarvon OTC Earth station and the Carnarvon Tracking Station . They wanted everything they could get. I worked out I still had a few friends left in the PMG (Post Master General�s Department) in Western Australia who could help us out. So, by 4 o�clock in the morning I dragged one of my friends out of bed, and he said, �Oh, I think I have got an OB (Outside Broadcast) link we could use, I�ll see what I can do give me a call back in an hour.� When I called him back he said, �Yes, I�ve organised it, two OB vans will be leaving the depot in Perth for Carnarvon at 8 o�clock this morning, as soon as the guys get to work.� There was no mention of money, or anything like that, it was a matter of let�s do it and sort things out afterwards. At the same time I got cracking with the PMG. Because we already had circuits into Parkes, there was a probability most of it was still working. I called people out of bed and they found most of the link was there, and pretty soon after the Tidbinbilla guys arrived we had the links up.� Trevor Gray , PMG technician: �We worked non-stop through the night to get the links going. After Apollo 11 we had trouble with the connections exploding when we switched the equipment on because of the high voltage and moisture getting in, so we had left the equipment switched on, but then all the electronic valves had deteriorated, and we were frantically trying to find the sick valves and change them before we could get the links going.� Wilfred Laing , Senior Technical Officer at the Redfern Microwave Terminal in Sydney was interrupted by the phone ringing: �It was the City South Control to say they needed Parkes up in a hurry. I rang through to Parkes to find they were already setting their end up. Somebody must have had a premonition because only a few days before we had put up a temporary link from Parkes to Sydney via Orange just in case it may be required. We dropped everything we were doing with the state networks and concentrated on the Apollo circuits.� Meanwhile out in space the astronauts found that as soon as they brought the Lunar Module communications system on line it clashed with the Saturn IVB rocket following them, as they were both transmitting on the same frequency. Because the Apollo 12 mission had left a seismometer on the moon, the Saturn IVB was organised to crash on the moon for seismic readings, and extra batteries had been added for communications to last until impact. Normally, this should occur well before the Lunar Module was fired up. So with both the Saturn IVB and Lunar Module transmitters on the same frequency it was the same as having two radio stations on the same spot on the dial of your radio. Which one does it try to lock onto? Bill Wood at the Goldstone Tracking Station, �The Flight Controllers at Houston wanted us to move the signal from the Lunar Module across to the other side of the Saturn IVB signal to allow for expected doppler changes. Tom Jonas, our receiver-exciter engineer, yelled at me, �that�s not going to work! We will end up locking both spacecraft to one up-link and wipe out the telemetry and voice contact with the crew.� I jumped on the station intercom and strongly requested Bill Sheridan, the Station Operations Supervisor, to tell Houston what would happen, but they just told us to follow instructions. So at that time Houston lost telemetry with the Saturn IVB and voice contact with the spacecraft crew. Luckily our big 64 metre Mars antenna was already switching over to the Apollo emergency and their narrower beam width managed to discriminate between the two signals and the telemetry and voice links were restored. So the situation stabilised from our point of view until it was time for us to hand this �mess� over to Honeysuckle Creek in Australia.� Honeysuckle Creek was tracking with its smaller 26 metre antenna. Deputy Director Mike Dinn : �This was where the receiver operators earned their money. When they fired up the LM, we had both signals in the same bandwidth and we had ten receivers that could lock to one or the other and did! Before the mission I had foreseen the possibility of our having to cope with the Saturn IVB and the LM together. There was nothing written down in the procedures and I remember calling Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, our technical advisors, to discuss what we might do, and we agreed there would be no difficulty in �pulling� the frequencies apart by tuning the station transmitters appropriately. I was used to this procedure in the Deep Space Network in the early years of lunar and planetary exploration. Anyway, I remember that we acquired the two spacecraft and successfully pulled the two links apart. Then Houston asked us to tune the frequency of one transmitter and I immediately recognised this would bring all the frequencies back together again. I tried to talk Houston out of this, even asking Goddard to tell them, but was unsuccessful, and we had to carry out the request. The problems we knew would happen, occurred.� John Mitchell , Honeysuckle USB Shift Supervisor: �Back when Apollo 1 had the fire, during the long suspension period that followed we used to hire a Cessna 210 and practice handovers and that sort of thing. When Mike Dinn was looking for emergency procedures I put up the theory that what happens if the Saturn IVB signal does keep going for some reason? So I proposed the theory of getting the LM to switch off and we practiced that time and time again with the aircraft. I told Mike Dinn that this was the way to go.� From his previous discussions with Goddard, Dinn agreed: �I advised Houston that the only way out of this mess was to ask the astronauts in the LM to turn off its signal so we could lock on to the Saturn IVB, then turn the LM back on and pull it away from the Saturn signal.� �They came back in an hour and told us to go ahead, and Houston transmitted the instructions up to the astronauts ‘in the blind’ hoping the astronauts could hear, as we couldn�t hear them at that moment. The downlink from the spacecraft suddenly disappeared, so we knew they got the message. When we could see the Saturn IV downlink go way out to the prescribed frequency, we put the second uplink on, acquired the LM, put the sidebands on, locked up and tuned away from the Saturn IVB. Then everything worked fine.� Reaching to punch up a communication loop is Supervisor , at right in the SB1 position. Behind him is Peter Cohn at the Antenna Position Programmer/ Tracking Data Processor. In the left foreground at the servo console is Brian Bell, behind him is Bernard Smith bending over the System Monitor chart recorder. Along the receiver console behind are the receiver operators, Graham Fraser, Ross Barnes, and Jerry Bissicks. Photo: Hamish Lindsay, exact date unknown. In Houston, the Director of Flight Operations, Chris Kraft, came out and grimly told the media, �This is as serious a situation as we have ever had in a manned spaceflight.� People around the world, already blas� about moon missions, suddenly became engrossed in this gripping drama from space as the world�s media wound themselves up for this journalists� manna from the Apollo program. Everybody was wondering would they come back alive? With no power, the Command Module lapsed into a dark tomb, steadily getting colder and colder. Beads of moisture formed over all the surfaces, crusting the windows. Occasional flashes of sunlight through the windows pierced the darkness lit only by their torches. Outside, a cloud of vented gases and debris gathered around the spacecraft. Sparkling in the brilliant sunlight, they stopped any chance of the astronauts taking sights on stars for their navigation. �The spacecraft was doing things I had never seen before. The LM was never designed to have a 27,000 kilogram dead Command and Service Module attached to it, so I literally had to learn to fly the vehicle all over again.� Apollo 13 was the second mission that had deviated from the �free-return� trajectory, where the spacecraft would automatically sling around the Moon and return to Earth if anything had gone wrong. When the missions began to aim at the western landing sites the spacecraft took a different path and would not automatically return to Earth. Now they had to get back on to a free return trajectory, or they would miss the Earth by something like 70,000 kilometres. The only reliable engine available was the LM�s descent motor, but that was never designed to push the combined CSM and LM, and there were no procedures to use it in this way – or simulations. Although pilots are reluctant to admit it, the computer can control burns much more accurately and reliably than manual control, so the astronauts waited anxiously while Houston figured out the rocket�s burn times. . 235kb mp3. Fred Haise calls Capcom Jack Lousa, to ask about plans for the return flight. Starting at 059:17:53GET . 795kb mp3. PAO commentary from 059:51GET. . 520kb mp3. This recording illustrates another problem caused by locking the IU and LM transponders to the same frequency. Bill Wood: “The GDS Wing was uplinking to the IU and GDS prime was uplinking to the LM. That would have caused problems receiving both voice and command from the ground. While there was only one 30 kHz voice subcarrier from the GDS Prime, the presence of two uplink carriers would have caused the interference that the crew was hearing.” Clip starts at 059:59:05GET. newspaper, printed just hours after the explosion, tells the story. Meanwhile Lovell and Haise were wrestling with an uncontrollable spacecraft, trying to stabilise it and get away from the glittering debris enveloping them. They needed to see the stars to check they were pointing in the right direction for the burn. Every ruse failed. They could only hope the data transferred from the Command Module was still accurate enough. �Roger, Aquarius, You are go for the burn,� Capcom Lousma finally announced. Haise commented, �This was yet untried. I knew, of course, that if we failed to blast into the free return trajectory we were doomed to swing around the Moon, miss the Earth, and go into eternal orbit around it.� First of all Lovell had to remember to unfold the Lunar Module�s legs so they wouldn�t get blasted by the descent rocket�s exhaust. Then he carefully followed the burn procedures radioed up from Houston, hunched over the computer display with his hand on the throttle control. At 1842:43 AEST Tuesday 14 April the engine burned for 34.23 seconds, just over the scheduled 30 seconds. �Auto shutdown.� Lovell advised Houston and everyone hung anxiously onto the trajectory displays. Was the Lunar Module�s motor able to do the job? Was Apollo 13 coming home? Soon the tracking data showed that the burn was perfect. Apollo 13 was going to round the moon at about 209 kilometres instead of 97 kilometres above the surface and would return to Earth ........ into the Indian Ocean. �Any old ocean would do as long as it was on the Earth,� announced a relieved Lovell. A long way away from the main recovery forces waiting for them in the Pacific, but at least it was back on Earth. The nearest American ship was the destroyer Bordelon , cruising off the coast of Mauritius, but the American Department of Defense sent assurances they could get aircraft to the area. Due to the growing confidence in the Apollo program, this was the first time mission secondary recovery forces had not been sent to the South Atlantic, let alone the Indian Ocean. Lovell checked around the instrument panels, and announced the next major item on his mind: �Okay, Houston, burn�s complete. Now we have to talk about powering down.� The next big problem were the consumables – it wasn�t much good the spacecraft arriving back on Earth with the astronauts dead from asphyxiation. The Lunar Module was only designed for two people for 45 hours, now it was going to have to support three bodies jammed in it for 90 hours. There just wasn�t enough water or power to last the voyage back to Earth. Lovell figured that the earliest they could get back would be around midnight on Friday; and he couldn�t see how it could possibly keep them going that long. In the Lunar Module Haise was looking at the situation. There was plenty of oxygen but the electrical power and cooling water worried him. The LM had no fuel cells, only batteries for two days of normal operation, and the water used for cooling the electronic systems would run out about 5 hours before reentry by his calculations. Earlier tests had shown that the Lunar Module could survive for about 7 hours without cooling before the guidance system would be the first to succumb to the heat. Haise waited for Mission Control�s assessment. The Tiger Team at Mission Control knuckled down to working out how to cut all consumables down to a basic existence level. John Aaron: �We gathered up in the back room with Kranz because there was nothing for the Command and Service Module guys to do in real time on the consoles because the spacecraft was dead. Kranz started talking about the strategy, what we were going to do going around the Moon and when we get back close to Earth we will power the spacecraft up and do the reentry....... and I said, �Kranz – you can�t do that because you don�t have the power� and he said, �Okay John Aaron, you�re in charge of power – if anybody wants any power you go and see John Aaron.� So I said, �Tell you what guys, I�ve got some ideas, but let me put them down a piece of paper and come back in an hour and I�ll show you a way we might be able to do this.� So they came back in about an hour, and I had sketched out a rough profile and I told them, �Okay guys, this is all the power we�ve got so we�ll have to do the guidance system and all this stuff this way.........� and everybody started saying �Oh my God, you can�t do that - we�ve got to have this, we�ve got to have that� – and that started a whole sequence of the brokerage process between me allocating subsystems and switch turn-ons and circuit breakers and keeping track of the power profile. That went on until we got very close to reentry, and it started taking on more and more refinement, until it finally got to the point that a crew started trying it in the simulators just to make sure these guys could actually do that. It was an endless iteration of brokerages across those days, and you have to remember all the power analysis was done on arithmetic and slide rules – we never had any calculators.� Bill Peters, Lunar Module TELMU, or electrical and environmental systems engineer, �We had developed some off-line computer programs that gave a time line power profile output. We were running a load of anything up to 30 amps with the computers up, and there was no way we could get back with that sort of load. I figured if we could get down to about 12 amps we would be okay. We only knew this from our ground computations. Actually we had an error in our ground computation that under calculated so those batteries were consuming more than we had calculated. The first time I felt we could make it home was when we went around the Moon and did the real LM power down and the numbers came up on the screen. Before that there was a possibility they would not make it. Once we hit the 12 amps I was convinced we had it made. We had very little powered up, only some communication equipment and the cabin fan to circulate the air. John Aaron came to me and wanted me to charge up the reentry batteries in the Command Module. We had concocted a scheme where we ran two CSM to LM umbilical cables backwards – they were designed for the CSM to send power to the LM – to heaters to keep some components warm while travelling to the Moon. This powered the Command Module�s inverters to charge its batteries. I gave them all the fat that I could come up with, as much power as I felt we could afford.� On Earth emergency teams swung into action around the country, from California to New York, where there were 10 phone lines kept open between Mission Control and a room staffed with 70 Lunar Module experts at the manufacturer�s plant in Bethpage, Long Island. On 14 April the US Senate adopted a resolution urging all communications media and businesses to pause at 2100, their local time, to �permit persons to join in prayer for the safety of the astronauts.� On the same day President Nixon cancelled his appointments and drove out to the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, accompanied by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, at the time Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, to find out the details of how the mission was progressing. Despite the Cold War, the Russians ordered four ships to the splashdown area, and Premier Aleksei Kosygin sent a message, �I want to inform you the Soviet Government has given orders to all citizens and members of the armed forces to use all necessary means to render assistance in the rescue of the American astronauts.� . 5 min 30s / 1.4MB mp3. Starting at 060:22:53GET. . 6 min 47s / 1.4MB mp3. This is 12 hours after the explosion and the comms is now much better. Starting at 066:35GET. Wednesday 15 April 1970 By 1520 on 15 April the crew in the crippled spacecraft had followed the ground instructions. Lovell, �We shut off all those exotic electronic devices that we would not normally be caught without out there the guidance systems, the computer, the auto pilot. We only had the radio for communications and a little fan to circulate the atmosphere.� �For most of the first two days after the explosion we split shifts .... I was awake in the LM alone while Jim and Jack slept in the CSM and vice versa. So there was no crowding during that period. It finally became so cold that we all just stayed in the LM. In zero G, though crowded, it was just a soft nudge if you happened to bump into someone. Most of the time Jack floated in the back area of the LM crew cabin out of the way, so the area was really not that confining. And it was good to have the three of us together in the same vehicle. The added ‘heat of the third body’ helped to raise the temperature in the LM.� The moonlight was flooding into the spacecraft�s interior and the astronauts were able to put their torches away. They had cut their consumption of water down to 170 grams per day. As Houston told them to save the Lunar Module�s water for cooling, Lovell told Swigert to transfer all the drinking water from the Command Module to the Lunar Module, which he did using plastic juice bags, but he sloshed some of the water into his boots, and suffered the misery of cold wet feet for the rest of the trip. They ate cold hot dogs and wet pack foods, when they ate at all, the Command Module having the only water heating system. All the food and drinks were cold refrigerator cold! They didn�t get very thirsty and became quite dehydrated. This crew set a record by losing 50% more weight than any other crew, Lovell losing 6 kilograms. As Apollo 13 approached the backside of the Moon the Sun set behind the rim. An eerie darkness enveloped the spacecraft. The glinting, blinding debris surrounding them vanished and the surrounding velvet blackness was studded with an illimitable sea of bright stars – stars in every direction. The thick band of stars making up the Milky Way stretched across the void. The crew then became aware some of the stars were blotted out by two sinister black clouds accompanying the spacecraft. Lovell, �I can�t for the life of me figure out what that dark stuff is.� Haise, �Yes � did you look at it, Jack?� Swigert, �Yes, okay......see it there like two black clouds.� They decided it was the debris from the explosion. They became subdued as they remembered the crisis-laden moments of the explosion until a voice from Earth broke the spell, �Aquarius, Houston.� �Go ahead Houston.� �Okay, Jim, we have a little over two minutes until loss of signal and everything�s looking good here.� Vance Brand�s matter-of-fact voice from the security of the Mission Control Center showed he was unaware of the mood in the spacecraft�s cabin. �Roger, I take it you don�t want us to activate any other systems or make any other preparations until we reacquire signal?� Lovell checked. �Roger – that�s correct.” �Okay, we�ll just sit tight, then. See you on the other side.� View from Aquarius, with the Command Module at right. NASA JSC scan via the ALSJ. AS13-62-8909. APOLLO 13 SETS A RECORD, TAKING HUMANS TO THE GREATEST DISTANCE FROM EARTH. At 1021:35 AEST on Wednesday 15 April (GET 77:08:35) Apollo 13 coasted behind the Moon and lost contact with the tracking stations on Earth for about 24 minutes 35 seconds. As they looped around the back of the Moon, at a maximum height of 253.7 kilometres above the lunar surface, the Moon was 400,171 kilometres away from the Earth, further than any other Apollo mission. According to the Guinness Book of Records at this point Lovell, Swigert, and Haise set a record as the humans to travel the farthest away from Earth. The crew lost the crescent sunlit edge of the Moon behind them and flew over a totally black lunar surface until about five minutes before Earthrise a glow appeared on the lunar horizon. Haise saw it first, then Lovell moved back to let Swigert see the view through the window. While Lovell hovered at the back of the cabin the two first timers were glued to the Command Module�s windows, gazing in awe at the grim and desolate landscape of chaotic craters and torturous rilles, taking photographs and exclaiming, �Wow, look at that!� �Hey, you guys come on we�ve got a burn to do. If we don�t get this right you won�t get your pictures developed!� Lovell had seen it all before on Apollo 8. �It�s all right for you – you�ve been here before � we haven�t.� They still couldn�t take their eyes from the passing spectacle. . AS13-62-8922. From the Apollo Image Atlas of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. After reacquiring the tracking stations on Earth at 1046:10 AEST the crew began to prepare for the Lunar Module�s descent rocket firing to bring them home faster. . 205kb mp3. AOS. Starting at 077:35:39GET. While they were waiting for the burn, Houston called up, �By the way, Aquarius, we see the results of Apollo 12�s seismometer. Looks like your third stage just hit the moon, and it�s rocking it a little bit.� Lovell answered, �Well, at least something worked on this flight. Sure glad we didn�t have a LM impact too!� The Saturn IVB smashed into the lunar surface at 1109:40 AEST 15 April, 140 kilometres west north west of the Apollo 12 seismometer with a force equal to 11 tonnes of TNT. Dr. Gary Latham, principal investigator of the experiment, commented: �The Apollo 12 Lunar Module�s signal only lasted for about 55 minutes. This signal (from the Apollo 13 Saturn IVB) arrived about 30 seconds after impact, the peak amplitude was a factor of 20 to 30 times larger than the LM, and lasted for 4 hours, which was astounding to us.� Choosing the safest option of the three available, one that did not require the Service Module to be dropped off, but took the longest time, Houston told the crew they could shorten the trip by 10 hours with a PC+2 burn, or a burn 2 hours after Pericynthion, the closest point they would come to the Moon. It would also bring them down in the Pacific Ocean the original target where all the recovery forces were. Unfortunately at this point there was a tropical storm �Helen� threatening the area, and they were considering an alternate landing spot. Due to the software in the LM not being able to accommodate the attached dead bulk of the CSM, Lovell had to fire the engine manually. At 1240:39 AEST on Wednesday afternoon Swigert sat on the ascent engine cover during the 4 minute 23 second Trans Earth Insertion (TEI), or PC+2 burn, which increased their speed by 966 kilometres per hour: �Now we were really on our way home, I felt much better about our chances,� he said. . 1.2MB mp3. As heard live via the Voice of America, Rhett Turner reporting. 79:28GET. Now it became a matter of waiting. And how the time dragged! �It was very quiet .... very quiet. And suddenly when there was nothing to do and you�re in a tight spot that�s bad news, because you start thinking about the tight situation you�re in and you want something to do!� In the computer room at Honeysuckle Creek it was anything but quiet. Geoff Seymour , Computer Supervising Engineer: �We had an intermittent hardware problem in the telemetry computer. Prior to the launch we had experienced this problem and at one stage they were anticipating delaying the launch until we could fix the problem, but the computer managed to stay up long enough for the launch to go ahead. Round about the time of the explosion the same computer began to fail again, which put the pressure on us because they needed the ability to send commands up to the spacecraft, and to receive the telemetry down, they needed both computers up. We began to troubleshoot this computer and managed to narrow it down to three printed circuit boards on one chassis. We replaced those, but it didn�t solve the problem. I stayed on site, sleeping in one of the bedrooms below until we fixed it. As the spacecraft rounded the moon and was coming back the NASA engineers decided to ship out a chassis from the computer in the training facility in Goddard and strapped it into a first class seat on an airliner. We believed we could fix it before the chassis arrived from the States. The only thing left for us to do was to take the chassis out of the computer and we removed several hundred printed circuit boards, we cleaned every socket in the chassis, we cleaned every pin on every printed circuit board we could remove � we put it all back in, and from that day onwards the intermittent problem just went away.� Early on Wednesday morning out in space a new development threatened the astronauts. A light warned them that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level, and in the confines of the Lunar Module they would have eventually gone to sleep and died, poisoned by their own breath. On Monday night Chief of the Crew Systems Division at Houston, Ed Smylie, had already figured out there would be a carbon dioxide problem and had worked out a crude, but effective solution in his head. He joined his assistant, Jim Correale, to devise a system to join the Command Module�s square lithium canisters, which clean the carbon dioxide from the air, to the Lunar Module�s round system using only the materials available on board such as tape, plastic, and cardboard. Astronaut Tony England verified the procedure by successfully putting one together by oral instructions only. Smylie carried his contraption into Mission Control and left it on the Capcom�s console. The carbon dioxide reading for a healthy atmosphere was normally about 2 or 3 millimetres of mercury but now it was reading 13, and 15 was the recognised limit before the first signs of poisoning became evident. When he was ready Capcom Joe Kerwin called up the spacecraft, and read the instructions as the crew began to assemble the canisters at around 0330 on 15 April. Lovell: �Jack and I put it together it wasn�t very handsome, but it worked.� . In the background is the contraption holding the carbon dioxide scrubbers. This photo is a combination of AS13-62-9003 and 9004, both taken by Fred Haise. Source images courtesy of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, composite image by Colin Mackellar, 2018. (Some objects in the photo have been slightly shortened due to changed perspectives. Here is previously used.) In the Australian Senate, Apollo 13 caused enough concern to be raised as questions on April 15 and April 16. Senator Anderson, �It is interesting to be able to tell the Senate and the people of Australia that a small army of dedicated Australians worked throughout the night to install microwave links enabling the 64 metre radio telescope of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation at Parkes to assist the return voyage of the Apollo 13 spacecraft. Parkes, within hours after a request by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, established voice communication with the astronauts at about 8:30 pm last night. Teams from the Post Master General�s Department and the Australian Broadcasting Commission, assisted by personnel from Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd., installed temporary microwave circuits from Parkes to Coonambro and from Red Hill in Canberra via Williamsdale to Honeysuckle Creek. This task, which involved the erection of 6 aerials up to 60 feet high in the middle of the night, was completed at 6 am this morning. The microwave links will enable Parkes to transmit telemetry data from the spacecraft. Parkes, and the Australian Capital Territory stations of Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla, which my Department operates for NASA, will start to play a crucial role after the spacecraft�s trans-Earth injection which was scheduled for 12:40 pm today. I would like to pay special tribute to the staff at Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla who, working at the lowest possible signal level, have been providing communications between the ground control and the astronauts. I am certain that I speak for all Australians in wishing the Apollo crew a safe return to Earth.� Thursday 16 April 1970 At 0626:53 AEST during the morning of 16 April, not long after they had entered the influence of the Earth�s gravity field, everyone at Mission Control slid to the edge of their seats and grappled with another heart stopping report from Haise: �I just heard a little thump, sounded like down in the descent stage, and I saw a new shower of snowflakes come up.� Another explosion! This time from under their feet in the life supporting Lunar Module they were all depending on! More debris gathered around the two stricken spacecraft. It was battery #2 in the Lunar Module�s descent stage. Don Arabian, from the Mission Evaluation Room, figured out that hydrogen and oxygen gases had built up in the battery�s lid until the pressure blew it off. Bill Peters, the Lunar Module�s electrical engineer: �After it made its �pop and snowflakes� as people say, we looked at the data and it had a spike in the current data, that�s all we saw in real time, but that battery continued to run for a long time before it failed to contribute electricity and I turned it off.� After consulting with the manufacturers, the engineers decided that the remaining batteries were going to last comfortably until the end of the mission. Mission Control began working on correcting some errors derived from the TEI burn with another burn of 14 seconds of the Lunar Module�s descent motor at 1431:28 AEST on 16 April. Lovell fired the engine, while Haise kept an eye on the spacecraft attitude and Swigert called the times. Houston was anxious not to disturb the spacecraft�s homeward trajectory, so told the crew not to dump any waste material overboard. This meant they had to find a way to store their urine on board. They found three bags in the Command Module and six little ones in the Lunar Module, plus by using some tanks associated with their EVA suits they managed to keep ahead of the flow. �I�m glad we got home when we did,� said Lovell, �because we were just about out of ideas for stowage.� Friday 17 April 1970 As Apollo 13 raced home the Flight Dynamics team (FDO, RETRO, and GUIDO) began to frown as they spotted the tracking data was indicating the spacecraft was gently drifting away from the critical entry corridor. What was causing this insidious drift? Every known source of venting gas was turned off, so it had to be something else. After the mission ended, it was concluded that the small thrust causing the drift came from a �non-propulsive� water boiler vent in the Lunar Module�s cooling system, which under normal circumstances would not have been noticed in the short dash down to the moon�s surface and back. When the error crept up to 161 kilometres it was time to do something, or the astronauts in their spacecraft would bounce out of the atmosphere and go off into solar orbit: �... to become a permanent monument to the space program,� as Lovell wryly put it, but said he would rather burn up in the atmosphere than skip out into solar orbit. The flight controllers were reluctant to fire the Lunar Module�s descent engine again. Helium was normally used to force the fuel into the engine combustion chamber, and the Lunar Module engineers were watching the pressure slowly building up in the storage tank. At 12,411 kPa a safety membrane would blow out to relieve the pressure. Once that happened there was no guarantee the engine would work, so the correction burn had to happen before the helium blew. Late during Wednesday evening when Capcom Vance Brand called Apollo 13: �We don�t want to power up the spacecraft completely, so that means no computer or mission timer. We�ll simply go with a manual burn, with you controlling the engine with the Start and Stop switches. For attitude, what we�re going to want to do is manually orient the spacecraft to place the Earth in the centre of your window. If you hold it there throughout the burn, the attitude will be correct. Got that?� �Roger, I think so,� Lovell confirmed thoughtfully, remembering back in Apollo 8 they had tried just such an exercise to see if they could steer the spacecraft into the reentry corridor with no help from the navigation systems. Houston planned to burn the Lunar Module�s descent motor when they were just entering the influence of the Earth�s gravity, and still moving relatively slowly. Using Swigert�s wrist watch, from 1431:28 AEST 16 April, they timed the burn manually for 14 seconds at 10% power, during which Lovell and Haise steered the spacecraft to keep the crosshair of the optical sight in their windows parallel with the Earth�s terminator, or sunset line, which meant they should be aiming straight for the reentry corridor again. Three and a half hours later the helium pressure reached 13,245 kPa and blew the safety membrane out, sending another thump through the spacecraft and a shower of sparkling crystals to join the cloud of debris shepherding Apollo 13 through space. The startled astronauts looked at each other but realised what it was, and Lovell murmured, �That�s the end of our helium problem.� It became so cold in Odyssey that sleep was impossible. Lovell: �When we turned off the electrical systems, we lost our source of heat, and the sun streaming in the windows didn�t help much. We were as cold as frogs in a frozen pool, specially Jack Swigert, who got his feet wet and didn�t have lunar overshoes. It wasn�t simply that the temperature dropped down to 1.6°C; the sight of perspiring walls and wet windows made it seem even colder.” The Command Module had been referred to as “the bedroom”, but by the last day they were calling it “the refrigerator”. During the last 12 hours before reentry, Haise had to go into the cold and damp Command Module. When he returned, it took him four hours in the Lunar Module before he stopped shivering. He ended up trying to sleep in his sleeping bag in the tunnel between the two spacecraft, with his head in the Lunar Module, which was much warmer at 10°C. Even after the fiery reentry and warm 27�C Pacific waters they could still see their frosty breath inside the cabin. Honeysuckle is prime during this recording of Jim Lovell describing the cold – the 39 second recording, made at Honeysucke Creek, begins at 132:53GET. This clip (254kb mp3 file) was recorded by Hamish Lindsay. Lovell commented: “We had a dead Service Module, we had a Command Module but it had no power in it, and we had a Lunar Module that was a wonderful vehicle but it didn�t have a heat shield.” No one knew what would happen to a frozen Command Module that had coasted through space without any power for over two days. �We were worried that the systems would get so cold that the batteries would freeze, the propellants in the lines would freeze – that when we brought the Command Module up it would be non-functional,� Kranz admitted later, backed up by Lovell: �The walls, ceiling, floor, wire harnesses, and panels were all covered with droplets of water. The chances of short circuits caused us apprehension, to say the least. But thanks to the safeguards built into the Command Module after the disastrous fire in January, 1967, no arcing took place. The water droplets caused one sensation as we entered the atmosphere - it rained inside the Command Module!� At Houston, Gene Kranz and his Tiger Team wrestled with reentry procedures and check lists for the last six hours of the mission that had never been tried before. Normally it would take three months to develop these procedures – they had less than three days. John Aaron, �Basically we planned to power up the vehicle in reverse, we had the crew turn the guidance system on in the blind, then right at the end I allowed them to turn on the telemetry system so that we could see it and verify it was all on okay. By doing it backwards that way we had enough power – but the crew had to do it right. Later I realised I was kinda lost in my own world trying to build that check list that had to be done perfectly the first time, then when I saw what shape the crew were in – being dehydrated, no real sleep, freezing to death, I realised that was another factor that I didn�t take into account. But they executed that check list perfectly, it was just amazing. We finally got the sequence down so Ken Mattingly could try it in the simulator, and he found things that wouldn�t work so would come back and negotiate with me and I said we can�t add more power, we have to do some other way. And of course the crew was getting kinda anxious, they were trying to be subtle, but not too subtle, and kept saying, �Hey Houston, we�re looking out the window and the Earth�s getting bigger and bigger – where�s that check list?�� It was Thursday evening in Houston when Arnold Aldrich and Gene Kranz escorted Aaron into the Mission Control Center, hugging the checklist to his chest: �I had one hand type-written copy with the latest changes in it, we didn�t have word processors in those days, and I said �Okay Flight - here it is, read it to the crew.�� A relieved Capcom Vance Brand took the copy, turned back to his console and called: �Houston, Aquarius.� �Go, Houston,� replied Lovell. �Okay, we are ready to read you the first checklist instalment� �All right, Vance. I�m going to get Jack on the line, so stand by.� Aaron became aware he was surrounded by people holding out demanding hands: “Where are the copies, EECOM? I need a copy.” So as Brand heard his headset saying, �Okay, Vance, I�m ready to copy,� he had to hand the checklist back and sheepishly answer: �Okay, Jack but we have to ask you to wait one minute again. We want to get a copy of the checklist into the hands of the Flight Directors and EECOM and it�ll take a second or two.� It was nearly half an hour before Brand began two tedious hours reading out the check list to a very tired Swigert as he copied them down holding a flashlight between his teeth. Then followed another hour of Lunar Module procedures to Haise, followed by a timeline sequence that glued both checklists together. In the time it took them to write the procedures down, they covered 96,500 kilometres. Swigert finished writing down the last entry just over 12 hours before they were due to start using it – there was no time for corrections or a second chance it had to be right the first time as the spacecraft hurtled towards that narrow door into the Earth�s atmosphere with its speed building up to a maximum of 38,623 kilometres per hour. Six and a half hours before they were due to start using the checklist � they tried to get some rest. Lovell reported: �Haise is lying in the tunnel with his head on the ascent engine cover, Swigert is lying on the floor in a sleep restraint.� They had been averaging three hours of disturbed sleep a day. Four hours before reaching the atmosphere Houston sent the message, �You can jettison the Service Module when you are ready. No big rush, but any time.� Lovell and Haise manned the Lunar Module, while Swigert fired the Service Module separation bolts from the Command Module at 2314:48 AEST during the evening of April 17. Lovell had suggested to Swigert that he put a label over the switch to jettison the Lunar Module in case he threw the wrong switch, and sent his mates off to be incinerated in the brief meteor the Lunar Module was to become! Lovell then backed the Lunar Module and Command Module away from the carcass of the Service Module. Swigert tried each of the Command Module windows but saw nothing. Lovell swung the spacecraft around and he and Haise peered out of the Lunar Module�s windows and also saw nothing – no sign of the big cylindrical Service Module. Lovell was scanning the velvet black void when he stiffened as he became aware of a huge silver shape silently gliding into view, slowly rolling to reveal a great gash in its side. Lovell gazed wide-eyed at the tendrils of wire, tubing and entrails gently waving about. Expecting only a small hole from the explosion, he said �I�m glad we couldn�t see the Service Module earlier. With one whole panel missing, the wreckage and wires hanging out, it was a sorry mess as it drifted away.� Then Haise yelled �I can see it out my window,� so Swigert rushed down the tunnel, stuck his camera to the window and managed to get some shots, though by then it was beginning to tumble. Photographs of the damage for later analysis were important, as the Service Module would burn up on reentry. has been cropped and considerably brightened. Click the image to watch – Animation assembled by Colin Mackellar from images courtesy of . . Jim Lovell exclaims, “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing.” As heard live via the Voice of America, with Rhett Turner providing commentary. 4.7MB mp3 / 9 minutes. When hearing of the extensive damage to the Service Module some of the Flight Controllers began to wonder about the Command Module�s heat shield. Had it been damaged in the explosion? Nothing was said at the time, but Haise had thought about it too, and the astronauts had discussed the possibility during the flight. During the mission they had filled the Command Module with all their rubbish in plastic bags, and now Haise had to transfer them all back to the LM as they prepared for the homecoming. He commented: �Boy, you wouldn�t believe this LM right now! There�s nothing but bags from floor to ceiling!� Saturday 18 April 1970 At 0400 USCST on Friday April 17 the members of the Tiger Team entered Mission Control and spread around the consoles for the final moments of the saga. John Aaron took over from Sy Liebergot at the EECOM console and around 1000 he felt ready for the Command Module power up procedure and called on the intercom, �Flight, EECOM.� �Go EECOM,� returned Kranz. �Ready for power up any time the crew is.� �Roger EECOM – Capcom Flight.� �Go Flight,� answered Joe Kerwin. �EECOM says the Command Module can come on line anytime.� �Roger Flight,� Kerwin keyed his air/ground switch, �Aquarius, Houston.� �Go Houston,� Lovell responded tersely. �You�re go to start powering up Odyssey.� Swigert felt a useful member of the crew again as at 0123 AEST Saturday April 18 he began to power up the Command Module using its normal three reentry batteries, which had been topped up from the Lunar Module�s batteries. �Every switch and circuit breaker that I turned on made me feel just that much better. I forgot about being tired and didn�t even notice the cold.� John Aaron, surrounded by the other shift EECOMs, watched the idling readouts on his console, waiting for Swigert to switch on the telemetry. He was looking for a maximum current drain of 43 amps. If it was much more the batteries might not last to splashdown. After nearly half an hour Swigert switched the last items on and the telemetry kicked all Aaron�s readouts into life. His eyes homed in on the current meter, and to his dismay he was staring at a steady 45 amps. �What the hell are those two rogue amps doing there?� he angrily questioned anybody on the intercom or within earshot. Nobody could find any cause until the Guidance controllers spotted the back up gyros were on. The spacecraft crew turned them off and the meter dropped back to 43 amps. Aaron, �I almost panicked there because I didn�t know how long those two amps had been on. It turned out the spacecraft was wired different than we thought, there was a sneak circuit in the wiring taking an extra load off the circuit breaker that we didn�t know about.� Once the Command Module was powered up it was important to check they were on the right track for reentry. Capcom Joe Kerwin: �This was the tense time for me. Swigert was trying to find the two stars necessary to align the platform to get their precise attitude. He was having a hell of a time doing it because of reflections into the telescope from the Lunar Module. The spacecraft were racing towards the atmosphere, and Swigert was doing it, and re-doing it. What we would have had to do was to say �Okay, Jack its time to knock that off – we�ll take an approximate attitude – it�s time to jettison the LM – we have to get on with it. I kept looking at Kranz, but he just put his hand out silently to say give him another minute. Then Swigert finally got it and called out �Five balls� which meant that the number after the decimal point on star angle difference was five zeros, meaning he had hit the right two stars and had an accurate platform. From there on everything just went nominally from my point of view.� Three and a half hours after the Service Module was jettisoned, it was the Lunar Module�s turn. Lovell: �Ten seconds.� Swigert, �Five..... LM Jettison,� At 0243 AEST 18 April the faithful �lifeboat� Aquarius was released and pushed off with 20.7 kPa air pressure from the tunnel. Sadly they watched it drift away to begin a slow forward somersault. Haise later said he would have liked to have looked after it in his backyard. �Okay, copy that. Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you,� Kerwin called out from Houston. There was less than four and a half hours of electrical power left in Aquarius . , and we thank you.” The ‘Age of Aquarius’ ends at 0243AEST on April 18th. Assembled from images AS13-59-8559, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73, courtesy of . , and we thank you.” The ‘Age of Aquarius’ ends at 0243AEST on April 18th. Assembled by Colin Mackellar from images courtesy of . . 340kb mp3. is jettisoned. Voice of Apollo as heard via ABC Radio. Paul Oats at Carnarvon: �When Apollo 13 came back in, it did this vast swing back over the Indian Ocean. Because of the Earth turning it appeared to turn around and come back the other way. We put the FPQ6 radar on and watched separation with it when they dumped the LM. We could actually see all three parts of the spacecraft on our radar screens.� John Saxon at Honeysuckle Creek: �We were the last site, as we generally were, to track the re-entry phase of the mission when they entered the Earth�s atmosphere. We were tracking both the Command Module and the Lunar Module. There was a great deal of interest in where the LM came down because it had a package to be installed on the Moon which had a radio isotope power supply, and there was a concern that had it entered over land there might have been a radioactive contamination problem. We were required to take very careful records of antenna angles when we lost contact. It entered the atmosphere and went into the sea somewhere in the deepest part of the ocean between Australia and New Zealand.� This was right where Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO) Jerry Bostick in Mission Control had carefully planned to put the Lunar Module. Click the image to get a 730kb scan of the entire map. Paul Mullen , antenna driver at Honeysuckle: �We lost the LM at the end – it was going too fast for our 3° per second antenna speed – it just dived out of sight ahead of our antenna.” Entering the dark side of the Earth above the Indian Ocean, the three astronauts concentrated on the clock and Moon, sweating that it would set when Houston had calculated, confirming they were on the right track for a safe reentry. At precisely the right second a black notch bit into the bottom of the Moon, and it sank below the Earth�s horizon. The Commander looked at his crew: �Gentlemen, we�re about to reenter. I suggest you get ready for a ride.� Kerwin, �Odyssey, Houston standing by. Over.� Swigert, �You have a good bedside manner, Joe.� Kerwin, �That�s the nicest thing anybody�s said. How about that?� Swigert: �Sure wish I could go to the FIDO (Flight Dynamics) party tonight.� Kerwin, �Yes it�s going to be a wild one......Somebody said we�ll cover for you guys and if Jack�s got any phone numbers he wants us to call, why, pass them down ... We just had a last time around the room and everybody says it�s looking great .... . 140kb mp3. Welcome home.� Swigert, �Thank you.� . 220kb mp3. Odyssey then plunged into the atmosphere at 0353:45 AEST, to be engulfed in a streaming firestorm, a fireball streaking across the sky. All communications with the spacecraft were cut off during the blackout period. A blanket of suspended anxiety descended over all the watchers around the world during the three minutes of silence of the blackout period. The seconds flicked away with no response from the spacecraft. Unable to do any more for the mission now, the Houston Flight Controllers could only watch the recovery forces at work on their large television screens and listen for the spacecraft to respond to their Capcom. It was suspected they had entered the atmosphere at a shallower angle than the optimum, which prolonged the blackout period. (page) searching for a signal from Apollo 13 – . The tension built up........ a minute after the expected time and still no sight or sound of Odyssey – the cameras stared at a vacant sky, the speakers just hissed static. Joe Kerwin called out from Houston, �Odyssey, Houston standing by.� Suddenly Swigert�s voice filled the airwaves over the Pacific, �Okay, Joe!� and at 0402 AEST three healthy parachutes were seen. Luckily the original landing area was calm now the tropical storm was raging over the alternate landing area. . 205kb mp3. Audio from NASA Public Affairs. Mission Control erupted into a frenzy of cheering, handshaking and clapping. John Aaron: �Since I had designed the reentry sequence, Kranz put me on the console as it came in and that worked out fine, but that sure was something when they made it through the blackout and out came the chutes. We had live video coverage from the ship � that really was a lucky strike extra to get that close for the finish.� So how close was it to three fatalities? According to Sy Liebergot, the LM had 104 hours of breathing oxygen left, but only 10 hours of water and 13 hours of electrical power. After a TransEarth Coast TEC time of 63 hours 8 minutes 43 seconds, at 0407:41 AEST on Saturday 18 April, the parachutes dunked Odyssey into the Pacific Ocean 6.5 kilometres from the USS Iwo Jima , and the crew were greeted by cheering sailors, a brass band, and Rear Admiral Donald Davis with, �We�re glad you made it, boys.� All around the world an audience of many millions joined in grateful thanks, each in their own way, for the safe return of Apollo 13 and its crew. . Photo courtesy of Kipp Teague’s . ...................................................................................................... Nine doctors checked them out to be in reasonable shape considering their ordeal, except for a urinary tract infection for Haise, brought on by not drinking enough fluids, which allowed the toxins to build up. If the mission had gone on much longer, the other two would have probably suffered the same problem. Stepping ashore in Pago Pago they were greeted by gaily dressed Samoans, their smiling faces moving Lovell to say, �We do not realise what we have on Earth until we leave it.� Dale Call, Goddard Network Director, made the following statement after the mission: “I would like to express my personal thanks along with the appreciation of everyone involved in the Apollo 13 mission for the outstanding support provided by Honeysuckle, Carnarvon, and Parkes. This support contributed significantly to the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew. I would especially like to single out those responsible for bringing up the Parkes antenna and associated data systems in record time. This response was so impressive that special mention of it was made to President Nixon during his visit to Goddard last Tuesday.” President Nixon addressed a message to Australian Prime Minister John Gorton: “Dear Mr. Prime Minister: On behalf of the people of the United States I wish to express to you and to the people of Australia my deep appreciation for your nation’s assistance in the successful recovery of the Apollo XIII astronauts. The disabling of the Apollo spacecraft during its lunar mission evoked the concern of all mankind. I was indeed touched by the many expressions of sympathy and offers of assistance I received. The safe recovery of the astronauts, for which we are all profoundly thankful, in no way lessens the gratitude of the Government and people of the United States for your nation’s immediate response to our need for assistance. Please convey my personal thanks to all of your people who worked so hard to maintain our communications with the weakened Apollo XIII spacecraft as it returned to Earth. Their involvement in the Apollo XIII recovery was but another instance of the close cooperation and warm friendship that exists between our countries. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.” For a brief moment Apollo 13 put the hassles of money and budgets and politics aside as people followed the progress of a mission where sheer guts and determination, teamwork and comradeship, ingenuity and skill brought the crew safely home. No doubt luck was a large factor in the equation. A triskaidekaphobic person would freak out at this list of thirteens � it was the 13th Apollo mission, launched at 1313 hours spacecraft time, the explosion occurred on April 13, 13:08 hours Honeysuckle Creek time, with 13 nations offering to provide rescue ships or aircraft. And stretching credibility a bit the astronauts first names of James, Fred, and Jack add up to 13 letters, the launch date of 4/11/70 add up to 13 from pad 39 which is 3 x 13. Even German Measles has 13 letters. Not surprisingly the Horoscope for Aquarius from the Houston Post of April 13 1970 said �Do surprises turn you on? Then this is the day for the unexpected.� Was Apollo 13 good luck or bad luck? Probably good luck because it brings up a lot of �What ifs...?� For instance, what if the explosion had happened while Lovell and Haise were on the lunar surface..........!!? Lovell said, �To get Apollo 13 home required a lot of innovation. Most of the material written about our mission described the ground-based activities, however I would be remiss not to state that it really was the teamwork between the ground and the flight crew that resulted in a successful return. Some people would call the Apollo 13 mission a $375 million failure. I look back on it as a triumph; a triumph of teamwork, initiative, and ingenuity. Nobody believes me, but during this six day odyssey we had no idea what an impression Apollo 13 made on the people of Earth. We never dreamed a billion people were following us on television and radio, and reading about us in banner headlines of every newspaper published. We still missed the point on board the carrier Iwo Jima which picked us up because the sailors had been as remote from the media as we were. Only when we reached Honolulu did we comprehend our impact.� For fun, Grumman, the builders of the Lunar Module, sent a bill for $US400,000 to North American Rockwell for towing the Command and Service Module 482,800 kilometres back home! Jack Swigert said after the mission, �I knew that no matter how dark the situation looked, we had a lot of help from the ground. I didn�t come back from this mission with less confidence in the goals of the space program. I came back with more.� Chris Kraft: �I think Apollo 13 was a classic example of what the ground flight operations was all about. It proved that the ground was worthwhile. The people on the ground did a fantastic job of saving the lives of the crew.� That ground crew included the tracking stations, connecting Mission Control with the spacecraft. President Nixon summed up this dramatic odyssey with: �The three astronauts did not reach the moon, but they reached the hearts of millions of people in America and in the world.� References: Tracking Apollo to the Moon – Hamish Lindsay Apollo 13 – Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger Flight – Chris Kraft Failure is not an Option – Gene Kranz – Sy Liebergot Interviews with: Chris Kraft Bill Peters Nevil Eyre Gene Kranz Joe Kerwin John Mitchell Glynn Lunney Bill Wood Bruce Window Fred Haise Don Gray Kevyn Westbrook Jerry Bostick Tom Reid Trevor Gray John Aaron Mike Dinn Wilfred Laing Sy Liebergot John Saxon   The text has been checked by Chris Kraft and Jim Lovell. ----------------------------------- Illustrations sourced by Hamish Lindsay and Colin Mackellar. Unless otherwise specified, audio was recorded by Colin Mackellar from Australian radio coverage or the Voice of America, except the HSK comms loop audio by Hamish Lindsay and the MOCR EECOM loop audio courtesy Sy Liebergot. Audio selected and edited by CM. Frames from Apollo 13 film and video selected and processed by CM with thanks to Mark Gray at Spacecraft Films . Back to the main Apollo 13 section . The Story Behind 'Apollo 13's Zero Gravity Sequences Will Make Your Stomach Churn Your changes have been saved Email Is sent Please verify your email address. You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics. The Big Picture Apollo 13 used unconventional methods to create zero-gravity sequences, including filming on a KC-135 airplane. Weightlessness was achieved by flying the plane in a parabolic pattern, requiring the cast and crew to train with NASA and take anti-motion sickness medication. The film's combination of real and simulated zero-gravity footage blended seamlessly, contributing to Apollo 13 's Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. Aside from its tense and compelling nature as a cinematic account of NASA’s aborted 1970 mission, Ron Howard ’s Apollo 13 is a visual marvel. Nabbing an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, the 1995 drama used all available techniques to recreate three astronauts’ brush with disaster, from the latest in CGI to models and miniatures and good old-fashioned in-camera trickery. In particular, Howard and his crew of effects wizards took a decidedly daring approach to simulating the zero-gravity environment of outer space. Convinced that traditional wire techniques wouldn't be sophisticated enough to sell the illusion that stars Tom Hanks , Bill Paxton , and Kevin Bacon were indeed weightless on the Apollo 13 spacecraft, Howard turned his attention elsewhere . At a fellow filmmaker's suggestion, Howard began investigating the rather far-fetched notion of placing his actors and crew in a relatively dangerous and physically unpleasant setting for the sake of authenticity . In other words, it's not every day that an anti-nausea cocktail of Scopolamine and Dexedrine is on the call list for a film set. NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy. 'Apollo 13's Zero Gravity Sequences Were Shot On A KC-135 Airplane Aptly dubbed "the vomit comet," the KC-135 is an airplane that, according to Ron Howard , has been used to train astronauts how to operate in zero-gravity conditions. By flying in a parabolic pattern, ascending to an altitude of 36,000 feet, and then pivoting into a diving motion, the KC-135 can create roughly 25 seconds of weightlessness at a time . " Steven Spielberg was the one that told me about it," Howard said. Intrigued by the idea of building the Apollo 13 spacecraft's interior sets inside the plane and shooting in a real zero-gravity setting, Howard began investigating the possibility of such a seemingly wild idea. "Everybody thought we were crazy," he later admitted. "NASA wasn't so interested in cooperating with us at first. There was some retired Russian plane that would do it. That seemed a little sketchy to us." But thanks to a helping hand from real-life Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell , the production finally secured permission from NASA under the condition that the film's actors and crew undergo several days of training, take a written exam, spend time in hyperbaric chambers, and take a test flight to prove they could "cut it." With NASA's blessing , Howard and his colleagues prepared for the experience of a lifetime, but shooting on the KC-135 would be anything but a cakewalk. Shooting On The KC-135 Was A Nauseating Experience To combat motion sickness that would accompany flying in a parabolic pattern, Apollo 13 's cast and crew took a cocktail prior to each flight that, per Howard, was a combination of Scopolamine and Dexedrine . "The Scopolamine evens out your stomach but wants to put you to sleep, and the Dexedrine keeps you working," he said. On one occasion, a flight on the KC-135 was canceled due to a mechanical issue, but not before Howard took his cocktail. With Dexedrine-an amphetamine-coursing through his system, but without the adrenaline associated with flying in a chaotic pattern and being weightless, the filmmaker suddenly found himself high as a kite. How Accurate Is Ron Howard’s ‘Apollo 13’? "Hollywood, do we have a problem?" Given the minimal periods of weightlessness the KC-135 enabled, the cast and crew had to carefully choreograph and rehearse their planned shots on a mock-up set constructed on the ground. Despite their meticulous rehearsing, however, they rarely captured all the footage they needed on a single mission. "We would do about 40 parabolas in the morning, come down and have lunch, and do about 40 parabolas in the afternoon," said Kevin Bacon . According to the actor, lunch often consisted of Mexican food, which inevitably reared its ugly head on one of the flights. "What's interesting about being thrown up on when it's zero-G is that it hovers there for a while," he told Entertainment Weekly. "It's floating, and there's nothing you can really do, except go, 'Here it comes,' and when they hit the G forces, it's coming down on you." 'Apollo 13's Zero-Gravity Sequences Lent A Sense Of Realism To The Film's Visual Effects Per The AV Club, the cast and crew of Apollo 13 ultimately flew a whopping total of 612 parabolas, which amounted to roughly four hours of footage , which greatly complemented the film's overall approach to visual effects. In addition to the unprecedented nature of shooting in a zero-gravity environment, Ron Howard employed other practical techniques to simulate weightlessness. Using what he dubbed "belly pans" for certain shots, which essentially functioned as a seesaw device that moved Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon up and down, the actors were able to convincingly mimic the weightless movement they'd become accustomed to on the KC-135. Through clever editing , for which Apollo 13 would win an Academy Award, the back-and-forth integration of real and simulated images of zero-gravity made for an illusory viewing experience that effectively blurred the line for audiences. Under the auspices of visual effects supervisor Robert Legato , Apollo 13 was, according to Ron Howard, "one of the last big model jobs" that was overseen by Digital Domain, then an up-and-coming effects company. Alongside ingenious artists, Legato oversaw a slew of practical effects that would shortly-and sadly-see a significant decline with the increasing efficiency of computer-generated imagery . "We had an amazing miniature department , and they were cranking stuff out like crazy," effects supervisor Kelly Port said in 2020 . Perhaps the biggest compliment heaped upon Digital Domain's team came courtesy of an iconic real-life astronaut. "Buzz Aldrin had asked what NASA archive was used to get some of the launch footage of the Saturn V, because he had never seen it before," artist Matthew Butler revealed. While Apollo 13 would ultimately lose 1995's Academy Award for Best Visual Effects to Babe , the historical drama has nonetheless retained its wow factor for decades thanks to Digital Domain's stellar work. By relying less on CGI and more on a diverse array of moviemaking techniques and practical effects, Ron Howard's film has aged like a fine wine with regard to visual trickery , thanks in no small part to the director's approach to capturing as much as he could in-camera, and his bold decision to shoot footage in an extreme environment like that of the KC-135 undoubtedly raised the stakes in crafting effects and thrills with an eye toward authenticity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Steven Spielberg learned of Howard's methods for capturing honest-to-God zero-gravity, he said, "You're crazy. I never thought you'd really do that." Apollo 13 is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S. RENT ON Amazon Movie Features Advertisement Supported by What We Know About the Global Microsoft Outage Airlines to banks to retailers were affected in many countries. Businesses are struggling to recover. Share full article By Eshe Nelson and Danielle Kaye Eshe Nelson reported from London and Danielle Kaye from New York. Across the world, critical businesses and services including airlines, hospitals, train networks and TV stations, were disrupted on Friday by a global tech outage affecting Microsoft users. In many countries, flights were grounded, workers could not get access to their systems and, in some cases, customers could not make card payments in stores. While some of the problems were resolved within hours, many businesses, websites and airlines continued to struggle to recover. What happened? A series of outages rippled across the globe as information displays, login systems and broadcasting networks went dark. The problem affecting the majority of services was caused by a flawed update by CrowdStrike , an American cybersecurity firm, whose systems are intended to protect users from hackers. Microsoft said on Friday that it was aware of an issue affecting machines running “CrowdStrike Falcon.” But Microsoft had also said there was an earlier outage affecting U.S. users of Azure, its cloud service system. Some users may have been affected by both. Even as CrowdStrike sent out a fix, some systems were still affected by midday in the United States as businesses needed to make manual updates to their systems to resolve the issue. George Kurtz, the president and chief executive of CrowdStrike, said on Friday morning that it could take some time for some systems to recover. How a Software Update Crashed Computers Around the World Here’s a visual explanation for how a faulty software update crippled machines. How the airline cancellations rippled around the world (and across time zones) Share of canceled flights at 25 airports on Friday 50% of flights Ai r po r t Bengalu r u K empeg o wda Dhaka Shahjalal Minneapolis-Saint P aul Stuttga r t Melbou r ne Be r lin B r anden b urg London City Amsterdam Schiphol Chicago O'Hare Raleigh−Durham B r adl e y Cha r lotte Reagan National Philadelphia 1:20 a.m. ET We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . 370 IMAGES Apollo 13 Research Paper Essay Example Apollo 13 Film Analysis ⇉Review of the Movie "Apollo 13" Essay Example The Apollo 13 Mission: About Job Astronaut The Major Failure of the Apollo 13 Apollo 13 VIDEO Apollo 13 Astronotları Nasıl Hayatta Kaldı? A Square peg in a round hole "Failure is not an option" Apollo 13 Apollo 13 : Journey Through Crisis #mystery #space #shortsvideo #shortsfeed #shorts Apollo 13 Part 1 Evening News Reports APOLLO 13 is out of this WORLD! (sorry for the pun.) COMMENTS Apollo 13 Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, by a giant Saturn V launch vehicle and only minutes later was inserted into orbit around Earth.About 2.5 hours after launch, the still-attached S IVB third stage was reignited to provide the final boost toward the Moon.The transposition maneuver (removing the lunar module, code-named Aquarius, from the S IVB adapter) was carried out ... Apollo 13: The Successful Failure Apollo 13: The Successful Failure. On April 11, 1970, the powerful Saturn V rocket carrying the Apollo 13 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center propelling astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert on what was intended to be humanity's third lunar landing. Unfortunately, the mission to explore the Fra Mauro region of the Moon ... Apollo 13 The Farthest Distance From Earth Reached by Humans. On April 15, 1970, Apollo 13 was 254 km (158 miles) from the lunar surface on the far side of the moon—and 400,171 km (248,655 miles) above ... Apollo 13: Facts about NASA's near-disaster moon mission The crewmembers of the Apollo 13 mission step aboard the USS Iwo Jima, after splashdown and recovery operations in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. Exiting the helicopter from left to ... How Apollo 13 Became NASA's 'Successful Failure' NASA redesigned the spacecraft with better wiring and an extra tank, and subsequent missions avoided similar problems. Decades later, Apollo 13 stands as one of the most famous space missions in ... Apollo 13 Apollo 13 (April 11-17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) ruptured two days into the mission, disabling its electrical and life-support system. Apollo 13: Triumph Over Adversity: [Essay Example], 643 words This essay aims to provide an informative overview of the Apollo 13 mission, highlighting the technical challenges faced, the collaborative efforts that ensured the astronauts' safe return, and the long-term impact of the mission on space exploration. 50 Years Later, Seeing Apollo 13 as a 'Successful Failure' So Apollo 13, which lifted off fifty years ago this week, on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 PM military time, went off as planned—until on April 13 it all went to hell, when an explosion in an oxygen ... Apollo 13 Apollo 13: The Successful Failure. On April 11, 1970, the powerful Saturn V rocket carrying the Apollo 13 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center propelling astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert on what was intended to be humanity's third lunar landing. Unfortunately, the mission to explore the Fra Mauro region of the Moon ... Apollo 13: Mission Details The mission's spent upper stage successfully impacted the moon. During the first two days, the crew ran into a couple of minor surprises, but generally Apollo 13 was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. At 46 hours, 43 minutes Joe Kerwin, the capsule communicator, or Capcom, on duty, said, "The spacecraft is in real good shape ... Apollo 13: Lessons From the Successful Failure Using those procedures, Swigert and Lovell powered up the command module, and Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific on April 17, 1970. The mission was almost immediately dubbed a ... Apollo 13 The third mission planned by the United States to land astronauts on the Moon was Apollo 13, which launched on April 11, 1970. The mission nearly ended in tragedy. An explosion and power failure partially disabled the spacecraft's command module, Odyssey, as it neared the Moon. The astronauts were able to employ their lunar module, Aquarius ... Apollo 13 Essay Decent Essays. 1397 Words. 6 Pages. Open Document. Apollo 13 The Apollo 13 mission was a significant historical event, because of the dangerous repercussions that followed the explosion of the oxygen tank on Apollo 13. The story in which the astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise surviving these errors during the flight is truly incredible. Apollo 13: Strategic Decision Making Get a custom case study on Apollo 13: Strategic Decision Making. 191 writers online. Learn More. The decisions have to take place within a context of limited time and other resources. Soon after the launch of NASA's Apollo 13, part of the spacecraft explodes leaving the astronauts with limited decisions. Their major aim is to ensure that ... Apollo 13 Essay example Apollo 13 Essay example. Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crewmembers aboard the ship were James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr. Before the launch, there had been a few problems. Thomas K. Mattingly was supposed to fly on the Apollo 13 but he was exposed to the measles. 'Apollo 13' an accurate depiction of 1970 lunar mission Though focused primarily on NASA's third manned lunar-landing mission, "Apollo 13" captures history and the mood of the nation in 1970 as the space agency worked for the safe return of the astronauts following an onboard explosion. The film was adapted from the book, "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13," by former astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. Working Out the Problems of Apollo 13 Working Out the Problems of Apollo 13. 50 years later, two Georgia Tech engineering alumni reflect on their experience in Apollo 13's mission control. "Houston we've had a problem" - we all know those infamous words that were transmitted from the crew of Apollo 13 back to mission control at 02:07:55:35 into the flight that took off on ... Apollo 13 movie review & film summary (1995) Those qualities were never demonstrated more dramatically than in the flight of the 13th Apollo mission in April 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon. The three astronauts on board - Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert - were faced with the possibility of becoming marooned in space. Their oxygen could run out, they could ... Essay On Apollo 13 Apollo 13 was to be the third mission sent from the Apollo Project to land on the Moon. An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks caused the spacecraft to become crippled during the flight and the crew were forced to orbit the Moon and return to the Earth without landing. The Apollo 13 mission was launched on Saturday afternoon, April 11, 1970 ... Crisis Management in the Film "Apollo 13" Essay (Movie Review) The film Apollo 13 (1995) depicts one of the most remarkable NASA missions. This mission is often referred to as a "successful failure" (Loftus). The flight to the Moon was called a failure as the astronauts never landed on it. However, it was also a success, as, despite major damage to the spaceship, all astronauts returned to the Earth in ... Learning the Lessons of Apollo 13 : turning failure into success Lines, M. S. (1996). Learning the Lessons of Apollo 13. PM Network, 10 (5), 25-27. Ron Howard's epic movie Apollo 13 recounts the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission to the moon, a mission that came close to causing the first loss of life in space for a U.S. astronaut. They were only a third of the way into the mission when one of the oxygen tanks in ... Apollo 13 essay The Mission Insignia for Apollo 13 showed the god Apollo, representing the Sun, riding his chariot across the surface of the Moon to symbolise the Apollo Project bringing back new knowledge from the Moon.. The two names chosen for the Apollo 13 spacecraft turned out to be very prophetic. The Command Module was called Odyssey from Homer and Arthur C. Clarke's fictitious works. Apollo 13 Movie Review Essay Example The Apollo 13 mission was a significant historical event, because of the dangerous repercussions that followed the explosion of the oxygen tank on Apollo 13. The story in which the astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise surviving these errors during the flight is truly incredible. In the movie Apollo 13, the creators depicted most of the events ... The Story Behind 'Apollo 13's Zero Gravity Sequences Will ... Aside from its tense and compelling nature as a cinematic account of NASA's aborted 1970 mission, Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is a visual marvel. Nabbing an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual ... What We Know About the Global Microsoft Outage Across the world, critical businesses and services including airlines, hospitals, train networks and TV stations, were disrupted on Friday by a global tech outage affecting Microsoft users. essay homework paper phd review speech study thesis