Apollo 13
Apollo 13 was the seventh mission of NASA's Project Apollo. It was the third lunar-lander mission with a crew. Jim Lovell commanded Apollo 13. The other astronauts were Jack Swigert and Fred Haise.
 The Apollo 13 crew took this photo of the Moon from the Lunar Module. | |
| Mission type | Crewed lunar landing attempt |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA[1] |
| COSPAR ID | 1970-029A |
| SATCAT no. | 4371 |
| Mission duration | 5 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Spacecraft |
|
| Manufacturer |
|
| Launch mass | 101,261 pounds (45,931 kg) |
| Landing mass | 11,133 pounds (5,050 kg) |
| Crew | |
| Crew size | 3 |
| Members | |
| Callsign |
|
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | April 11, 1970, 19:13:00 UTC |
| Rocket | Saturn V SA-508 |
| Launch site | Kennedy LC-39A |
| End of mission | |
| Recovered by | USS Iwo Jima |
| Landing date | April 17, 1970, 18:07:41 UTC |
| Landing site | South Pacific Ocean 21°38′24″S 165°21′42″W / 21.64000°S 165.36167°W |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Regime | Cislunar |
| Flyby of Moon (orbit and landing aborted) | |
| Closest approach | April 15, 1970, 00:21:00 UTC |
| Distance | 254 kilometers (137 nmi) |
| Docking with LM | |
| Docking date | April 11, 1970, 22:32:08 UTC |
| Undocking date | April 17, 1970, 16:43:00 UTC |
 Left to right Lovell, Swigert, Haise, 12 days after their return. | |
The craft launched successfully toward the Moon, but two days after launch a faulty oxygen tank exploded. It damaged the Service Module. It lost oxygen and electrical power. There was a very large chance that the astronauts would die before they could return to Earth. They were very short on oxygen. Oxygen is not just used to breathe; on the Apollo spacecraft it was used in a device called a Fuel cell to generate electricity. So they saved their remaining air by turning off almost all their electrical equipment, for example heaters. It became very cold in the spacecraft.
The astronauts also had to move into the Apollo Lunar Module to survive and use it as lifeboat.
When they approached the Earth they were not sure that their parachutes, needed to slow the Command Module down, would work. The parachutes were thrown out by small explosive charges that were fired by batteries. The cold could have made the batteries fail, so the parachutes would not work and the Command Module would hit the ocean so fast that all aboard would be killed.
The flight
Apollo launched on April 11, 1970 at 19:13 UTC from Cape Canaveral and went into temporary low Earth orbit. Two hours later they fired the rocket motor again to go towards the Moon. They wanted to land at Fra Mauro. Despite the hardships, the crew made it back to Earth. Though the crew did not land on the Moon, the flight became very well known.
Some people thought it was a failure because they did not land on the Moon. However, others thought it was possibly the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations' (NASA's) greatest accomplishment in returning three men in a very damaged spacecraft back to Earth safely.
Coming up to re-entry, it was thought that the electrical equipment would short circuit because the water in the astronauts' breath had turned back into a liquid all over the computers. However, the electronics were fine.
Books were written about the event, for example one by Jim Lovell, the commander of the mission. A movie was also made about it, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks.
Apollo 13 Media
Mission Operations Control Room during the TV broadcast just before the Apollo 13 accident. Astronaut Fred Haise is shown on the screen.
Swigert, Lovell and Haise the day before launch
Apollo 13 flown silver Robbins medallion
CSM-109 Odyssey in the Operations and Checkout Building
Lovell practices deploying the flag
Lovell (left) and Haise during geology training in Hawaii, January 1970
Haise practices removing the fuel capsule from its transport cask mounted on the LM. The real cask sank unopened into the Pacific Ocean with its radioactive contents.
The circumlunar trajectory followed by Apollo 13, drawn to scale. The accident occurred about 56 hours into the mission.
Apollo 13 launches from Kennedy Space Center, April 11, 1970
Apollo 13 spacecraft configuration during most of the journey: Click on image for key to numbered components.
NASA - Apollo 13 Lunar Mission - Views Of The Moon (2:24)
Apollo 13: Houston, We've Got a Problem (1970) — Documentary about the mission by NASA (28:21)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Related pages
References
- ↑ Orloff, Richard W. (September 2004) [First published 2000]. "Table of Contents". Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference. NASA History Division, Office of Policy and Plans. NASA History Series. Washington, D.C.: NASA. ISBN 0-16-050631-X. LCCN 00061677. NASA SP-2000-4029. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
Other websites
Media related to Apollo 13 at Wikimedia Commons