The Story of Apollo 13

The Story of Apollo 13. April 11-17, 1970. Apollo 13 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) failed two days into the mission. The crew instead looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Biloxian Fred Haise as Lunar Module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. , A routine stir of the cryogenic tanks resulted in an electric short with damaged wiring insulation in Oxygen tank 2. Ultimately both of the two oxygen tanks depleted, resulting in the loss of primary electrical power from the fuel cells. For the first time the CSM had to be shut down in flight so as to not deplete the three small batteries that were needed for entry. The crew transferred to the LM that served as a lifeboat. With the lunar landing cancelled, Mission Control worked around the clock to bring the crew home alive. , 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 temperatures that dropped to freezing. 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. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed public interest in the Apollo program; tons of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean on television. , An accident board found errors in the preflight preparations that led to the damage to wiring insulation in Oxygen tank 2. The board recommended changes, including minimizing the use of potentially combustible items inside the tank; this was done for Apollo 14. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized several times, most notably in the 1995 film “Apollo 13”, based on “Lost Moon”, the 1994 memoir co-authored by Lovell.