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So accurate was the hybrid transfer that a scheduled course correction was canceled. Apollo 13 suffered its first unexpected issue two days before liftoff. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly was exposed to German measles and grounded. His backup, Swigert, joined the team with little time to work alongside his new crewmates before the mission began. Then, during the liftoff, the center engine of Stage 2 cut off two minutes early. To get the ship into orbit, that stage’s other engines had to burn 34 seconds, while Stage 3 had to fire for nine extra seconds longer.
People at Mission Control hoped this would be the mission’s biggest glitch. The two astronauts wore their spacesuits for some 20 walk-throughs of EVA procedures, including sample gathering and use of tools and other equipment. They flew in the "Vomit Comet" in simulated microgravity or lunar gravity, including practice in donning and doffing spacesuits. To prepare for the descent to the Moon's surface, Lovell flew the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle . Despite four of the five LLTVs and similar Lunar Landing Research Vehicles having crashed during the Apollo program, mission commanders considered flying them invaluable experience.
This Day In History: 04/17/1970 - Apollo 13 Returns to Earth
Slayton's original choices for Apollo 13 were Alan Shepard as commander, Stuart Roosa as CMP, and Mitchell as LMP. However, management felt Shepard needed more training time, as he had only recently resumed active status after surgery for an inner ear disorder and had not flown since 1961. Thus, Lovell's crew , having all backed up Apollo 11 and being slated for Apollo 14, was swapped with Shepard's. Apollo 13 was to be the second H mission, meant to demonstrate precision lunar landings and explore specific sites on the Moon.
That was just the first in a long line of hurdles that nearly cost the men their lives. Next came problems with all three engines during takeoff; each one had to burn at incorrect rates and for different times than intended. But ultimately, two days into the journey, it was an exposed wire that caused a fire in an oxygen tank that forced NASA to abort the mission and turn its focus to getting the men home — if they could. With the men now traveling inside the lunar module, landing on the moon was no longer a possibility, so Mission Control ordered Apollo 13 to swing around the moon and take a return course for Earth.
The Farthest Distance From Earth Reached by Humans
During the countdown demonstration test, which was two weeks before the flight, we had the spacecraft loaded with fuel and things of this nature. The test was completed — everything worked fine for launching the vehicle. To the average American living in 1970, the space program had become rather humdrum. The previous year had witnessed Apollo 11’s historic first Moon landing and Apollo 12’s precision touchdown within walking distance of the unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft. But by early 1970, NASA’s run of success had turned much of the nation complacent.
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 towards Earth, the crew powered down every nonessential system in the spacecraft. On the evening of April 13, when the crew was nearly 322,000 kilometers 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 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 right are Fred Haise, James Lovell and John Swigert.
Space Shuttle Columbia
We left and the ground crew went in to secure the spacecraft. One of their jobs was to remove the liquid oxygen from the two liquid oxygen tanks that were in the spacecraft. And the way they did it, they put gaseous oxygen, or gas, in the fill line and forced it out the vent line through a system in the tank itself; the plumbing allowed you to do that.
This led to the cancellation of the mission and the end of the Apollo program. The clock in Mission Control counted down the seconds until the moment when the astronauts should be able to report on their status. After the timer reached zero, it continued measuring precious seconds of silence. One minute after the expected communication, the atmosphere in Mission Control became wall-to-wall stress. “A sinking feeling, almost a dread, filled the room,” according to Kranz. At one minute and 28 seconds, an aircraft spotted the capsule.
Did Apollo 13 make it back to earth?
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. Support crew members were to assist as directed by the mission commander. Usually low in seniority, they assembled the mission's rules, flight plan, and checklists, and kept them updated; for Apollo 13, they were Vance D. Brand, Jack Lousma and either William Pogue or Joseph Kerwin.
Worldwide interest in the Apollo program was reawakened by the incident; television coverage was seen by millions. Four Soviet ships headed toward the landing area to assist if needed, and other nations offered assistance should the craft have to splash down elsewhere. President Nixon canceled appointments, phoned the astronauts' families, and drove to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Apollo's tracking and communications were coordinated. The volume surrounding the spacecraft was filled with myriad small bits of debris from the accident, complicating any efforts to use the stars for navigation. The mission's goal became simply getting the astronauts back to Earth alive. The circumlunar trajectory followed by Apollo 13, drawn to scale.
The space travelers would have to make course corrections, but this procedure held the greatest hope for survival. To save power in the lunar module, the temperature had to be lowered to about the level of a meat locker or refrigerator. In the cold, the astronauts reported a loss of appetite and difficulty sleeping. Mike Massimino, a Space Shuttle astronaut, stated that Apollo 13 "showed teamwork, camaraderie and what NASA was really made of".
Lovell, looking out the window, reported "a gas of some sort" venting into space, making it clear that there was a serious problem. 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. The mural was later purchased by actor Tom Hanks, who portrayed Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, and is now in the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Illinois. For Apollo 13, flight directors were Gene Kranz, White team ; Glynn Lunney, Black team; Milton Windler, Maroon team and Gerry Griffin, Gold team. The CAPCOMs for Apollo 13 were Kerwin, Brand, Lousma, Young and Mattingly.
The LM reentered Earth's atmosphere and was destroyed, the remaining pieces falling in the deep ocean. 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. The impact point was over the Tonga Trench in the Pacific, one of its deepest points, and the cask sank 10 kilometers to the bottom. Although the LM was designed to support two men on the lunar surface for two days, Mission Control in Houston improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The crew experienced great hardship, caused by limited power, a chilly and wet cabin and a shortage of potable water. There was a critical need to adapt the CM's cartridges for the carbon dioxide scrubber system to work in the LM; the crew and mission controllers were successful in improvising a solution.
Well, actually, this is the first time that we were really going for exploration or discovery. The first , Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, were merely machines to say, “Hey, we can do the job. Here it is.” … But by the time 13 came around, didn’t worry so much about the transition and the mechanics of getting to the Moon. What the scientists were now looking at was the Moon itself.
Jim Lovell was the captain of the Apollo 13 mission and the only person to walk on the moon. Lovell was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1942 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1966. Lovell was the commanding officer of Apollo 9, the first manned mission to land on the moon.
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