Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970. Originally the crew (James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr., and Fred Wallace) was supposed to be the third crew to land on the lunar surface and perform experiments on the moon. However, on the third day of the mission, a malfunction occurred within the oxygen tanks and it exploded causing the mission to be aborted. The crew was forced to use the LM as a life support and perform a lunar fly-by (to orbit the moon, similar to the procedure in Apollo eight) to catapult themselves back to Earth. Even though the Apollo 13 mission failed to land people on the moon, it still contributed greatly to the development of the Apollo in the sense that NASA's procedure for handling emergencies during any mission was a successful plan that worked for Apollo 13. NASA's accomplishment in retrieving a malfunctioning Module in space is a great event in history.

Facts and Statistics from the NSSDC (National Space Science Data Center) Master Catalog:

Apollo 13 was launched on Saturn V SA-508 on 11 April 1970 at 19:13:00 UT (02:13:00 p.m. EST) from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. During second stage boost the center engine of the S-II stage cut off 132 seconds early, causing the remaining four engines to burn 34 seconds longer than normal. The velocity after S-II burn was still lower than planned by 68 m/sec, so the S-IVB orbital insertion burn at 19:25:40 was 9 seconds longer than planned. Trans-lunar injection took place at 21:54:47 UT, CSM/S-IVB separation at 22:19:39 UT, and CSM-LM docking at 22:32:09 UT. The S-IVB auxiliary propulsive system burned at 01:13 UT on 12 April for 217 seconds to put the S-IVB into a lunar impact trajectory. (It impacted the lunar surface on 14 April at 01:09:41.0 at 2.75 S, 27.86 W with a velocity of 2.58 km/s at a 76 degrees angle from horizontal.) A 3.4 second mid-course correction was made at 01:27 UT on 13 April.

A television broadcast was made from Apollo 13 from 02:24 UT to 02:59 UT on 14 April and a few minutes later, at 03:06:18 UT Jack Swigert turned the fans on to stir oxygen tanks 1 and 2 in the service module. The Accident Review Board concluded that wires which had been damaged during pre-flight testing in oxygen tank no. 2 shorted and the Teflon insulation caught fire. The fire spread within the tank, raising the pressure until at 3:07:53 UT on 14 April (10:07:53 EST 13 April; 55:54:53 mission elapsed time) oxygen tank no. 2 exploded, damaging oxygen tank no. 1 and the interior of the service module and blowing off the bay no. 4 cover. With the oxygen stores depleted, the command module was unusable, the mission had to be aborted, and the crew transferred to the lunar module and powered down the command module.

At 08:43 UT a mid-course maneuver (11.6 m/s delta V) was performed using the lunar module descent propulsion system (LMDPS) to place the spacecraft on a free-return trajectory which would take it around the Moon and return to Earth, targeted at the Indian Ocean at 03:13 UT 18 April. After rounding the Moon another LMDPS burn at 02:40:39 UT 15 April for 263.4 seconds produced a differential velocity of 262 m/s and shortened the estimated return time to 18:06 UT 17 April with splashdown in the mid-Pacific. To conserve power and other consumables the lunar module was powered down except for environmental control, communications, and telemetry, and passive thermal control was established. At 04:32 UT on 16 April a 15 second LMDPS burn at 10% throttle produced a 2.3 m/s velocity decrease and raised the entry flight path angle to -6.52 degrees. Following this the crew partially powered up the CSM. On 17 April at 12:53 UT a 22.4 second LMDPS burn put the flight path entry angle at -6.49 degrees.

The service module, which had been kept attached to the command module to protect the heat shield, was jettisoned on 17 April at 13:15:06 UT and the crew took photographs of the damage. The command module was powered up and lunar module was jettisoned at 16:43:02 UT. Any parts of the lunar module which survived atmospheric re-entry, including the SNAP-27 generator, planned to power the ALSEP apparatus on the lunar surface and containing 3.9 kg of plutonium, fell into the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand. Apollo 13 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on 17 April 1970 at 18:07:41 UT (1:07:41 p.m. EST) after a mission elapsed time of 142 hrs, 54 mins, 41 secs. The splashdown point was 21 deg 38 min S, 165 deg 22 min W, SE of American Samoa and 6.5 km (4 mi) from the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima.