Forty-five years ago today, the three astronauts on Apollo 13 were thinking that it was going to be just another day of their moon mission adventure as they were lifted into space. Little did they know that their travel would have them fighting for their lives a couple of days later. Those three men were NASA astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise.
Ruptured Oxygen Tank Causes Apollo 13 Problem
Apollo 13 started off its space adventure just like most of the other Apollo moon mission trips. The mission launched on time at 2:13 EST, and then its second stage engine shut itself down two minutes early and the remaining engines had to be burned longer to make up for that issue.
The astronauts then made their travel towards the moon and expected to follow in the footsteps of the previous Apollo 12 mission and make their landing near a seismometer the previous crew had placed on the moon’s surface.
However, that part of their travel was never to occur, as the well-publicized accident on Apollo 13 that nearly took the lives of the three men happened 56 hours into their historic moon mission, when Lovell made the radio call, “Houston we have a dilemma.”
The Apollo 13 had just experienced the explosion of the number two oxygen tank in the Service Module, which was caused by damage to insulation and the short circuit of fan wiring inside the tank. This in turn caused damage to several other things on the mission, including causing the crew to lose most of the module’s oxygen into space.
Getting Apollo 13 Back Home Safely
The problem now was how to get the three Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely. They only thing they could do was try to burn the descent engine of the moon module, and try to push it into what is called a free return trajectory, which uses the gravity of the Moon to sling-shot the ship back to Earth. If everything worked properly, the ship would end up in a position that would allow the ship to travel back to the Earth.
Lucky for the three men on board, the engine fired. If it hadn’t, studies say they would have been stranded in Earth orbit and have missed the Earth by nearly 3,000 miles. The engine on the module worked as designed and the astronauts planned a splashdown into the Indian Ocean. However, the new splashdown area was at least 74 hours away from the closest ships able to rescue them, and Houston worried if their water, electricity and especially their oxygen would last that long.
Those and other issues had to be fixed while the entire world held its breath for the successful return of the three Apollo 13 astronauts on their ill-fated travel and mission to the moon. Thankfully, all of the jury-rigging and other fixes by the crew worked, and the three men made their historic splashdown and were rescued, while the world let out a sigh of relief for their safe return.
