Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Mattingly had been scheduled to fly on the Apollo 13 mission, but three days prior to launch, he was held back and replaced by Jack Swigert due to exposure to German measles (which Mattingly did not contract).
During this flight Haise developed a urinary tract infection and later kidney infections. These caused him to be in pain for most of the trip. Haise was slated to become the sixth human to walk on the Moon during Apollo 13 behind Lovell, who was to be fifth.
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).
Ken Mattingly is a NASA astronaut who flew on the Apollo 16 mission and twice on the space shuttle. He is perhaps best remembered, however, as the astronaut who stayed home from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission after being exposed to German measles.
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.
At the outset of the program, NASA had formally established the target probability of overall success for each Apollo mission—a landing and return—at 90 percent. Overall crew safety was estimated at 99.9 percent.
And, it had scorched wiring insulation from being tested at incorrect voltages. all the oxygen tanks from that facility had a similar problem. Fixing both of these would most certainly have prevented the Apollo 13 accident.
Mattingly had been scheduled to fly on the Apollo 13 mission, but three days prior to launch, he was held back and replaced by Jack Swigert due to exposure to German measles (which Mattingly did not contract).
Cameos: Jim Lovell appears as captain of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima; Howard had intended to make him an admiral, but Lovell himself, having retired as a captain, chose to appear in his actual rank. Marilyn Lovell appears among the spectators during the launch sequence.
Apollo 13 suffered its first unexpected issue two days before liftoff. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly was exposed to German measles and grounded. His backup, Swigert, joined the team with little time to work alongside his new crewmates before the mission began.
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.
Burns suffered by the crew were not believed to be major factors, and it was concluded that most of them had occurred postmortem. Asphyxiation occurred after the fire melted the astronauts' suits and oxygen tubes, exposing them to the lethal atmosphere of the cabin.
Factual errors
Near the end of the movie, Lovell's character voice over says that Fred Haise was due to be part of the crew of Apollo 18. That's incorrect. Haise was part of the backup crew for Apollo 16 and so would have been due to fly on Apollo 19.
While talking to Hollywood Outbreak, Tom Hanks shared, “We just felt like an absolute idiot when Jim Lovell came by and we were flicking switches.” But to everyone's surprise, Jim said, “Hey, it looks like a real thing.” The actor shared that he was in doubt if they were giving justice to the real-life incident.
Hanks was only 38 and therefore also a few years shy of Lovell's actual age, but coming off of two straight Best Actor Oscar wins, for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, there was no bigger movie star in the world to cast as your leading man.
Lovell is a veteran of four space missions and received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At age 92, he lives in suburban Chicago.
Their moon-bound spacecraft wrecked by an oxygen tank explosion on April 13, 1970, the astronauts urgently radioed, “Houston, we've had a problem here.” Screenwriters for the 1995 film 'Apollo 13' wanted to punch that up. Thus was born, “Houston, we have a problem.”
the fire that killed Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee.
From the Apollo 13 Mission Report ( 8 Mb ), "The crew reported sleeping well the first 2 days of the mission. They all slept about 5-1/2 hours during the first sleep period. During the second period, the Commander, Command Module Pilot, and Lunar Module Pilot slept 5, 6, and 9 hours, respectively.
Book Details. The bold story of Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician who worked for NASA during the space race and was depicted in the film Hidden Figures. You've likely heard of the historic Apollo 13 moon landing.
When most people think of emergency fixes in space, the first incident that comes to mind is the famous Apollo 13 mission. The astronauts fashioned duct tape and surplus materials into air filtration canisters in the lunar module to keep all three astronauts alive for the entire trip home.
The testing team decided to solve this problem by heating the tank overnight to force the liquid oxygen to burn off.
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 small tube used to fill and empty the tank of its super-cold contents had been damaged by the mishandling almost two years earlier. To get around the problem, workers turned on heaters inside the tank to warm up the remaining liquid oxygen, turning it into gas that could then be vented to the outside.