Apollo 13 "The Successful Failure"

Apollo 13 was crewed by James Lovell Jr., John Swigert Jr., and Fred Haise Jr.  It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970.  Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the lunar region of Fra Mauro, but due to an explosion on the spacecraft that was related to oxygen tank wiring the crew was unable to land on the moon and this landing site was reassigned to Apollo 14.  Apollo 13 started the mission with a small problem with one of the engines soon after launch.  After this was remedied, both the crew and Mission Control thought they had seen the glitch for this mission.  Unfortunately, they were wrong.  About  3 days into the mission, a Service Module oxygen tank blew up aboard Apollo 13. The Command Module's normal supply of electricity, light and water was lost. James Lovell Jr. gasped, "Hey Houston, we've had a problem here."  Lovell reported to Houston that he saw they were venting a gas into space."  Lovell continued,  It was oxygen gas escaping at a high rate from the second, and last, oxygen tank.  Luckily, the LM had plenty of oxygen for the 3 men to survive 4 days.  However, the LM carbon dioxide filters were not prepared for that amount of CO2; the crew had to construct devices to fit the square Command Module filters into the round holes on the LM. The crew had to conserve water and power as well. The crew had to use the LM as a lifeboat to escape the decreasing air pressure in the Service Module.  The astronauts had to shutdown every unnecessary system in order to conserve power.  They used an umbilical from the LM to provide a small amount of charge to the Command Module batteries to keep them charged.  This way they would be have control of the spacecraft when they got to re-entry. To get the astronauts home, Mission Control put them on a free-return trajectory; meaning they would be slingshot around the moon using the moon's gravity to send them back to Earth.  However, to ensure this the crew had to conduct two burns to make sure they were on the correct course.  Instead of using the navigation systems, which were unreliable because of the debris from the explosion, the crew had to use the Sun and the Earth as a navigation points to guide them.  Although they endured little sleep and much discomfort, the performed the burn perfectly.  Soon after, the crew moved back into the cold Command Module and prepared for the re-entry interface.  The crew safely landed in the Pacific Ocean nearly four days after the explosion.

Click on the Crew to see pictures of the mission     Apollo 13 Crew       Apollo 13 Crew Patch

Last Updated May 23, 2000                                                                                                                   a SCEN103 Project