Apollo 13

      April 11, 1970 at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA launched its seventh Apollo mission to send humans into outer space and its third to land on the moon. The crewmembers who were aboard the Apollo 13 spacecraft were James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr., and Fred W. Haise Jr. On the second day of the Apollo 13 mission the second of the oxygen tanks had exploded thus, damaging one of the three principal components of the Apollo 13 spacecraft. As a result the mission was abandoned and overall survival was the main objective. Survival, although narrow, was achieved but the mission was not. That being said, Apollo 13 is classed as a successful failure. Apollo 13, although not accomplishing what was originally planned, left a permanent mark on the history of space exploration with the miraculous solving the of the many life-threatening problems the crew had to face.

   The first two days of the mission went rather smoothly. According to, “Apollo 13 Mission Highlights,” at 46 hours, 43 minutes, Joe Kerwin, the capsule communicator on duty, even said, ‘The spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We’re bored to tears down here.’ That would be the last of their boredom for a while.

    April 13, 1970 at 9:08 p.m., or 55 hours, 55 minutes, oxygen tank No. 2 exploded. The liquid in which the tank contained was needed for oxygen and fuel. In order to keep this liquid from separating into layers, as it had a tendency to do so, it needed a device to constantly stir it but, unfortunately, the wires to this device were damaged as to where a large detonation occurred when electricity passed through them. This was the cause of the explosion. It also lead to the failure of oxygen tank No. 1 as well.

   The crew was notified of this by a sudden bang and vibration. Swigert noticed a warning light signal and said, ‘Houston we’ve had a problem here.’ The warning lights indicated the loss of much of the spacecraft’s main source of energy which were the fuel cells, they had lost two of three of them. One oxygen tank looked to be entirely empty while the other was quickly decreasing in substance. The crew reacted impulsively. Their first move was to attempt to close the hatch between the Command Module and the Lunar Module which Swigert and Lovell ultimately failed in doing due to the stubborn lid that wouldn’t stay shut. They soon came to a realization that there was no cabin leak and as a result strapped the hatch to the Command Module couch. Lovell had happened to look out a left-hand window where he saw the last piece to the puzzle of the catastrophe that was Apollo 13. ‘We are venting something out into the… into space,’ he reported to Houston. He went onto say, ‘It’s a gas of some sort.’ That indicated that oxygen gas was escaping from the second, and last, oxygen tank at a high rate

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