Apollo 13 has been called a “successful failure,” because the crew never landed on the Moon, but they made it home safely after an explosion crippled their ship. A switch and insulation, which should have been modified during an upgrade to one oxygen tank, were damaged during a test of that tank during construction.
Despite tension between the crew and ground controllers, the mission was a complete technical success, giving NASA the confidence to send Apollo 8 into orbit around the Moon two months later.
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.
Apollo 13 was NASA's third moon-landing mission, but the astronauts never made it to the lunar surface. During the mission's dramatic series of events, an oxygen tank explosion almost 56 hours into the flight forced the crew to abandon all thoughts of reaching the moon.
The Apollo 13 mission was to be the third lunar landing in the program before an on board explosion forced the mission to circle the Moon without landing.
The Apollo 13 mission was designated a successful failure because the crew was returned safely even though the odds were stacked against them.
Two Apollo missions were failures: a 1967 cabin fire killed the entire Apollo 1 crew during a ground test in preparation for what was to be the first crewed flight; and the third landing attempt on Apollo 13 was aborted by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon, which disabled the CSM Odyssey's electrical power ...
During the nail biting 12.5 minute descent from lunar orbit, the LM's onboard computer (most critically needed during landing) shut down and recycled 5 times due to an erroneous checklist that had the crew turn on their ship's radar too early resulting in multiple data overloads.
Although the historic Apollo 11 mission's three astronauts made it home safe, a once-classified anomaly almost killed them. The problem occurred during Apollo 11's return to Earth. It caused a discarded space module to nearly crash into the crew's capsule.
Apollo 2 and 3: There were no craft named Apollo 2 or 3. Apparently after the Apollo-1 craft was destroyed during a pre-flight test at Cape Canaveral, the first few mission (through Apollo-6) were unmanned missions to test various aspects of the Apollo program - Launch vehicle, CSM, LM, and their inter-play.
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.
Tomorrow marks the 45th anniversary of the start of a mission that came to be known as NASA's most famous successful failure. Apollo 13 captured the world's attention after an explosion crippled the spacecraft. The three astronauts and dozens of flight controllers labored for days to solve one challenge after another.
With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth on April 17, 1970.
The rest of Apollo 10's mission passed without incident, right up to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 26. Despite the spin out incident, Apollo 10 was considered sufficiently successful that NASA chose to go for a landing with the next mission, Apollo 11.
Shortly after being launched on a rainy day at Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 12 was twice struck by lightning, causing instrumentation problems but little damage. Switching to the auxiliary power supply resolved the data relay problem, saving the mission.
The spacecraft and parachute system descended in this configuration to water landing. The three parachutes were disconnected and one of the good main parachutes was recovered. The failure occurred abruptly.
On April 13, 1970, disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission.
Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA's Apollo program, died Tuesday in Houston.
Apollo 1 was expected to fly to Earth orbit later in 1967 with astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White on board. During a test on the launch pad, however, a fire erupted and rapidly asphyxiated all three astronauts.
The fault was in engine two, but due to cross-connection of wires, the command from the Instrument Unit also shut down the engine three, which had been running normally. The Instrument Unit was able to compensate, and the remaining three engines burned for 58 seconds longer than planned.
Mitchell entered the changes with minutes to go until planned ignition. A second problem occurred during the powered descent, when the LM landing radar failed to lock automatically onto the Moon's surface, depriving the navigation computer of vital information on the vehicle's altitude and vertical descent speed.
Fast Facts: Apollo 12
The Apollo 12 spacecraft was struck by lightning twice just after launch, temporarily knocking out electrical power and telemetry – but this didn't stop a successful mission.
The next two missions, Apollos 18 and 19, were later canceled after the Apollo 13 incident and further budget cuts. Two Skylab missions also ended up being canceled. Two complete Saturn V rockets remained unused and were put on display in the United States.
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.
An explosion 56 hours into the mission happened before the command module and lunar module had separated, so the crew were able to use the intact lunar module as a lifeboat with its own power sources, rockets and oxygen supply.