[127][128] This infection was probably caused by the reduced water intake, but microgravity and effects of cosmic radiation might have impaired his immune system's reaction to the pathogen. A routine stir of an oxygen tank ignited damaged wire insulation inside it, causing an explosion that vented the contents of both of the SM's oxygen tanks to space. The seismometer left by Apollo 12 had detected frequent impacts of small objects onto the Moon, but larger impacts would yield more information about the Moon's crust, so it was decided that beginning with Apollo 13, the S-IVB would be crashed into the Moon. Apollo 13's shallow reentry path lengthened this to six minutes, longer than had been expected; controllers feared that the CM's heat shield had failed. Nonetheless, the switches Beech used were not rated for 65 volts. 24 October 1960. One of the most famous breakthroughs came as engineers tried to find a way to fix that problem, by using the air purifiers from the now abandoned capsule in the lander. [132], Flight controller John Aaron, along with Mattingly and several engineers and designers, devised a procedure for powering up the command module from full shutdown – something never intended to be done in flight, much less under Apollo 13's severe power and time constraints. The Apollo 13 emergency situation began on April 13, 1970, six days after the 42nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony in which the Oscar for Best Visual Effects was awarded to Marooned (1969) , a movie similar to Apollo 13 (1995) though entirely fictional. This required adding a third tank so that no tank would go below half full. Flight controllers told the astronauts to shut down their command module and climb into Aquarius. [110][136] Apollo 13's final midcourse correction had addressed the concerns of the Atomic Energy Commission, which wanted the cask containing the plutonium oxide intended for the SNAP-27 RTG to land in a safe place. Obtain photographs of candidate exploration sites. And then there was dead silence on the pad." The spacecraft and Mission Control monitoring systems were modified to give more immediate and visible warnings of anomalies. Apollo 13 almost killed three NASA astronauts. [75] For Apollo 11 and 12, the flag had been placed in a heat-resistant tube on the front landing leg; it was moved for Apollo 13 to the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) in the LM descent stage. [98] Haise was completing the shutdown of the LM after testing its systems while Lovell stowed the TV camera. But eventually they appeared in the air, the spacecraft being cradled by three parachutes as it fell through the sky and down to Earth. These would be needed for the final hours of the mission, but the remaining fuel cell, already starved for oxygen, was drawing from the surge tank. Later helicopter surveys found no radioactive leakage. The LM was modified to make transfer of power from LM to CM easier. [15] At the time of Apollo 13, Lovell was the NASA astronaut with the most time in space, with 572 hours over the three missions. [108] At pericynthion, Apollo 13 set the record (per the Guinness Book of World Records), which still stands, for the highest absolute altitude attained by a crewed spacecraft: 400,171 kilometers (248,655 mi) from Earth at 7:21 pm EST, April 14 (00:21:00 UTC April 15). found that the failure began in the service module's number 2 oxygen tank. The change was part of an effort to increase the amount of hover time available to the astronauts as the missions headed into rougher terrain. This "PC+2" burn would take place two hours after pericynthion, the closest approach to the Moon. Swigert reported 26 seconds later, "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here," echoed at 55:55:42 by Lovell, "Houston, we've had a problem. The Apollo 12 astronauts also left one as part of its ALSEP, which was nuclear-powered. The impact point was over the Tonga Trench in the Pacific, one of its deepest points, and the cask sank 10 kilometers (6 mi) to the bottom. One option would shave 36 hours off the return time, but required jettisoning the SM; this would expose the CM's heat shield to space during the return journey, something for which it had not been designed. [131] Despite all this, the crew voiced few complaints. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. The normal procedure, in lunar orbit, was to release the LM and then use the service module's RCS to pull the CSM away, but by this point, the SM had already been released. [174], None of the Apollo 13 astronauts flew in space again. [168] An emergency supply of 19 litres (5 US gal) of water was stored in the CM, and an emergency battery, identical to those that powered the LM's descent stage, was placed in the SM. [11] Lovell, looking out the window, reported "a gas of some sort" venting into space, making it clear that there was a serious problem. [157] The board found that Swigert's activation of the Oxygen Tank 2 fan at the request of Mission Control caused an electric arc that set the tank on fire. [104] The "Main Bus B undervolt" meant that there was insufficient voltage produced by the SM's three fuel cells (fueled by hydrogen and oxygen piped from their respective tanks) to the second of the SM's two electric power distribution systems. They had enough power to switch on the command module and wait as they went through the gruelling, hot ordeal of slamming back down to Earth. It was designed by artist Lumen Martin Winter, who based it on a mural he had painted for the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Apollo 13 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970 at 18:07:41 UT after a mission elapsed time of 142 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. Only when we reached Honolulu did we comprehend our impact: there we found President Nixon and [NASA Administrator] Dr. Paine to meet us, along with my wife Marilyn, Fred's wife Mary (who being pregnant, also had a doctor along just in case), and bachelor Jack's parents, in lieu of his usual airline stewardesses. Without oxygen, needed for breathing and for generating electric power, the SM's propulsion and life support systems could not operate. [91] An experiment to measure the amount of atmospheric electrical phenomena during the ascent to orbit – added after Apollo 12 was struck by lightning – returned data indicating a heightened risk during marginal weather. [205][206], In advance of the 50th anniversary of the mission in 2020, an Apollo in Real Time site for the mission went online, allowing viewers to follow along as the mission unfolds, view photographs and video, and listen to the conversations, not only between Houston and the astronauts, but between mission controllers on the audio loops. The CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve its remaining resources for reentry, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. Swigert initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the LM, but he and Lovell quickly realized there was no leak. [76], For the first time, red stripes were placed on the helmet, arms and legs of the commander's A7L spacesuit. [91], The crew settled in for the three-day trip to Fra Mauro. Kathleen Quinlan, Actress: Apollo 13. I watched again the Apollo 13 movie and I am wondering how the astronauts survived the cold of space, returning home in the LEM? [193] Budget cuts made such a decision easier, and during the pause after Apollo 13, two missions were canceled, meaning that the program ended with Apollo 17 in December 1972. North American declined payment, noting that it had ferried three previous Grumman LMs to the Moon without compensation. [44], The mission's motto was in Lovell's mind when he chose the call sign Aquarius for the lunar module, taken from Aquarius, the bringer of water. After Lovell retired in 1991, he was approached by journalist Jeffrey Kluger about writing a non-fiction account of the mission. The two were the wrong shape to fit together – they were literally trying to fit a square canister into a round hole – but engineers back on Earth came up with a way of using various pieces of spacecraft to push the two together. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two … [54], The Apollo 13 prime crew undertook over 1,000 hours of mission-specific training, more than five hours for every hour of the mission's ten-day planned duration. The stirring fans, with their unsealed motors, were removed, which meant the oxygen quantity gauge was no longer accurate. 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. 54-300. Houston also informed them that the Moon would be centered in the commander's window of the LM as they made the burn, which was almost perfect – less than 0.3 meters (a foot) per second off. [147], Immediately upon the crew's return, NASA Administrator Paine and Deputy Administrator George Low appointed a review board – chaired by NASA Langley Research Center Director Edgar M. Cortright and including Neil Armstrong and six others[note 5] – to investigate the accident. [154] The sudden failure of Oxygen Tank 2 compromised Oxygen Tank 1, causing its contents to leak out, possibly through a damaged line or valve, over the next 130 minutes, entirely depleting the SM's oxygen supply. [73] The Heat Flow Experiment and the CPLEE were flown for the first time on Apollo 13; the other experiments had been flown before. Slayton created the support crews because James McDivitt, who would command Apollo 9, believed that, with preparation going on in facilities across the US, meetings that needed a member of the flight crew would be missed. None of these was attempted because of the accident. [7] Since success was obtained in 1969 with the sixth Saturn V on Apollo 11, nine rockets remained available for a hoped-for total of ten landings. [6] The goal was achieved with Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. [65], Apollo 11 had left a seismometer on the Moon, but the solar-powered unit did not survive its first two-week-long lunar night. [61], The plan was to devote the first of the two four-hour lunar surface extravehicular activities (EVAs) to setting up the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) group of scientific instruments; during the second, Lovell and Haise would investigate Cone crater, near the planned landing site. [175] Swigert was to have flown on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (the first joint mission with the Soviet Union) but was removed as part of the fallout from the Apollo 15 postal covers incident. In "Delay to Episode 7", the BBC explained that the presenter of the series, medical doctor Kevin Fong, had been called into service. The crew instead looped around the Moon, and returned safely to Earth on April 17. [113], The change would get Apollo 13 back to Earth in about four days' time – though with splashdown in the Indian Ocean, where NASA had few recovery forces. [132] This DPS burn, at 105:18:42 for 14 seconds, brought the projected entry flight path angle back within safe limits. [169], All electrical wiring in Bay 4 was sheathed in stainless steel. Apollo 13 was on the hybrid trajectory which was to take it to Fra Mauro; it now needed to be brought back to a free return. [50][51], The LM stages, CM and service module (SM) were received at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in June 1969; the portions of the Saturn V were received in June and July. Just a couple of days later came a blast and the words that would shock and fascinate the world: "OK, Houston, we've had a problem here". Nevertheless, yet another burn was needed at 137:40:13, using the LM's reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, for 21.5 seconds. [19], According to the standard Apollo crew rotation, the prime crew for Apollo 13 would have been the backup crew[note 2] for Apollo 10 with Mercury and Gemini veteran Gordon Cooper in command, Donn F. Eisele as CMP and Edgar Mitchell as LMP. [14], Apollo 13's mission commander, Jim Lovell, was 42 years old at the time of the spaceflight, which was his fourth and last. [48] Including the spacecraft, the rocket weighed in at 2,949,136 kilograms (6,501,733 lb). Eventually they arrived back near home for what is traditionally one of the most perilous parts of the journey: dropping back through Earth's atmosphere to come home. [24] This exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. [142] He originally planned to give the award to NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine, but Paine recommended the mission operations team.[143]. [119] Normally, the accuracy of such a burn could be assured by checking the alignment Lovell had transferred to the LM's computer against the position of one of the stars astronauts used for navigation, but the light glinting off the many pieces of debris accompanying the spacecraft made that impractical. With the lunar landing canceled, mission controllers worked to bring the crew home alive. An investigative review board found fault with preflight testing of the oxygen tank and the fact that Teflon was placed inside it. Temperatures on the heater tube within the tank may have reached 540 °C (1,000 °F), most likely damaging the Teflon insulation. [107] The mission's goal became simply getting the astronauts back to Earth alive. [155][156] With both SM oxygen tanks emptying, and with other damage to the SM, the mission had to be aborted. [176] Haise was slated to have been the commander of the canceled Apollo 19 mission, and flew the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests before retiring from NASA in 1979. Less than 10 … But the accident could have damaged the SPS, and the fuel cells would have to last at least another hour to meet its power requirements, so Kranz instead decided on a longer route: the spacecraft would swing around the Moon before heading back to Earth. The role of the backup crew was to train and be prepared to fly in the event something happened to the prime crew. 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) failed two days into the mission. The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. When Kranz questioned Liebergot on this he initially responded that there might be false readings due to an instrumentation problem; he was often teased about that in the years to come. [63] Despite the fact that four of the five LLTVs and similar Lunar Landing Research Vehicles crashed during the course of the Apollo program, mission commanders considered flying them invaluable experience. [140] They stayed overnight, and then were flown back to Houston. [103] The accident happened at 55:54:53 (03:08 UTC on April 14, 10:08 PM EST, April 13). [82][83] This was caused by severe pogo oscillations. The staff at Mission Control looks on during a live TV broadcast from Apollo 13 the evening of April 13. The quantity probe was upgraded from aluminum to stainless steel. 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) failed two days into the mission. Lovell later described this improvisation as "a fine example of cooperation between ground and space". Will it be safer the next time people head to the moon, more than 50 years later? But the astronauts now still needed to travel the 200,000 miles back to Earth, and do it without the oxygen or power they required for the journey. Also considered part of the spacecraft was the launch escape system which would propel the command module (CM) to safety in the event of a problem during liftoff, and the Spacecraft–LM Adapter, numbered as SLA-16, which housed the lunar module (LM) during the first hours of the mission. Then, with the crew safely back on Earth, public apathy set in once again. At the end of their week together, Lovell made Silver their geology mentor, who would be extensively involved in the geology planning for Apollo 13. [144], An estimated 40 million Americans watched Apollo 13's splashdown, carried live on all three networks, with another 30 million watching some portion of the six and one-half hour telecast.