3.5 Apollo 13 During the second period, the Commander, Command Module Pilot, and Lunar Module Pilot slept 5, 6, and 9 hours, respectively. The third sleep period was scheduled for 61 hours, but the orygen tank incident at 56 hours precluded sleep by any of the crew until approximately 80 hours.
For the Apollo 13 mission, the blackout was much longer than normal because the flight path of the spacecraft was unexpectedly at a much shallower angle than normal.
Update: A typical Apollo blackout lasted about 4 minutes. Due to a shallower re-entry path, Apollo 13's blackout was calculated to last about 4.5 minutes. Flight director Gene Kranz's logs show that it took about 6 minutes to re-establish contact with Apollo 13.
As the Apollo 13 crew re-entered the Earth's atmosphere there was a blackout period where they couldn't communicate with mission control. The blackout period was supposed to last three minutes, but it lasted 90 seconds longer, leaving those at mission control unaware if the crew were going to make it home safely.
The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
The Eagle has landed.” At the time of landing, Mission Control thought that the spacecraft had just 17 seconds of fuel left in the descent stage. However, post mission analysis showed that sloshing in the fuel tank during Armstrong's search for a safe landing site caused the fuel gauge to give an inaccurate reading.
During the Apollo 13 mission, the LM environmental control system provided a habitable environment for about 83 hours (57:45 to 141:05 GET). Cabin temperature remained low due to low electrical power levels. This caused crew discomfort during much of this period, with cabin temperatures ranging between 49°F and 55 °F.
To get around the problem, the ships were specifically designed to radiate heat away very quickly to compensate. Just in case this cooling happened too quickly, for instance when not in direct sunlight helping to heat things up, the ship was also equipped with heaters to keep the astronauts comfortable.
Five minutes to go now for reentry into the Earths atmosphere. Now reading a velocity of 34,335 feet per second [10,465 m/s]. Range to go 2,921 nautical miles [5,410 km].
Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area. An explosion on board forced Apollo 13 to circle the moon without landing. The Fra Mauro site was reassigned to Apollo 14.
By the time Apollo 13 came around, the television networks didn't even bother covering the launch because they felt there wasn't enough interest. Apollo 13 was to be the most ambitious mission yet.
The TLI placed Apollo on a "free-return trajectory" - often illustrated as a figure of eight shape. This course would have harnessed the power of the Moon's gravity to propel the spacecraft back to Earth without the need for more rocket fuel.
The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. 2 in the service module. The explosion ruptured a line or damaged a valve in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly.
“Spaceflight, you're operating in a pretty difficult environment,” said Gene Kranz, the flight director who was in charge in mission control on the night of April 13, 1970, when Apollo 13 went awry. The mission had launched two days earlier, and the three astronauts aboard — James A. Lovell Jr., Fred W. Haise Jr.
Apollo 13 is arguably the most realistic movie about space out there. The Ron Howard-directed film chronicles the challenges that the real-life crew of NASA's Apollo 13 mission faced when they had to turn around from their lunar destination after one of their oxygen tanks malfunctioned.
On March 14, 1968, NASA announced that Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission planned for October 1968, would use a mixed-gas atmosphere of 60% oxygen and 40% nitrogen at a pressure of 16 psi during operations on the launch pad.
Because Duke didn't have German measles as a kid, he lacked immunity against the rubella virus and came down with the disease. Duke had trained together and attended meetings with the other five crewmembers up until Friday April 3, while he was still contagious.
Spacesuit insulation technologies protect the astronaut from extreme high and low temperatures of the space environment. However, the same insulation technology also works to keep heat released by the astronaut's body inside the suit.
Haise came down with a kidney infection, but suffered no long-term ill effects from the ordeal. The mission, dubbed a successful failure, spawned a popular movie called "Apollo 13," which was based on Lovell's biography, "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
As a result, the Apollo spacecraft was covered with light and reflective surfaces and with multilayered insulation designed to slow the passage of heat in or out.
In order to power the fuel cells that provided most of the electricity used during the flight, the Apollo spacecraft carried two tanks of liquid hydrogen and two tanks of liquid oxygen.
With only 30 seconds of fuel left in the tank, Armstrong guided the Eagle softly down onto its impromptu landing site that, moments later, would become “Tranquility Base”—the first (temporary) human outpost on the moon.
According to Apollo By The Numbers, the LM descent stage for Apollo 11 started with 8248 kg of propellant (fuel + oxidizer), and consumed 7899 kg of it in descent. 3050 kg of that was Aerozine-50 fuel, the rest nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.