Why did Apollo 13 take 4 minutes?

As the Apollo 13

Apollo 13
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise.
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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.

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How long did it take for Apollo 13 to explode?

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.

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Why did Apollo 13 go so far?

Apollo 13's primary mission objectives were to: "Perform selenological inspection, survey, and sampling of materials in a preselected region of the Fra Mauro Formation. Deploy and activate an Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. Develop man's capability to work in the lunar environment.

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Why did Apollo 13 take 4 minutes for reentry?

Because they were a little shallow on their re-entry angle, so took a longer flight path into the atmosphere.

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Why did it take Apollo 13 so long to come out of blackout?

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.

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Apollo 13's Intense Comms Blackout

37 related questions found

What were the odds of Apollo 13 surviving?

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.

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Why did Apollo 13 have to stir the oxygen tanks?

The purpose of stirring the cryogenic tanks containing the hydrogen and oxygen was to give more accurate readings of how much gas was left. But because of an electrical fault, one of the oxygen tanks exploded. Initially the crew thought a meteoroid had hit them, but it soon became apparent they were losing oxygen.

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Why do you blackout during reentry?

When a spacecraft travels through the atmosphere at speeds much faster than the speed of sound – say, during reentry – the friction between its surface and the surrounding air forms a plasma sheath, leading to a communication blackout lasting up to 10 minutes.

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How long did Apollo 13 go without sleep?

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.

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Did Apollo 13 astronauts survive?

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.

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Which Apollo burned up?

the fire that killed Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee.

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Is Apollo 13 still lost?

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.

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How hot did it get inside Apollo 13 during reentry?

With the electrical systems turned off, the temperature approached about 34 degrees Fahrenheit prior to entering the atmosphere.

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How did the Apollo 13 crew not freeze?

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.

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Why was Apollo 13 a successful failure?

The Apollo 13 mission was designated a successful failure because the crew was returned safely even though the odds were stacked against them. The success can be attributed to the amount of training and planning that goes into mission preparation.

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What did the Apollo 13 crew do to survive?

The command module was dying, quickly. But the lunar lander, docked to the command module, was intact. Under the direction of Glynn Lunney, the flight director whose shift followed Mr. Kranz's, the Apollo 13 astronauts scrambled into the lunar module, which served as their lifeboat.

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What did the Apollo 13 crew eat?

Their menu, however, was limited to rather unpalatable gelatin-coated food cubes, freeze-dried items, and paste squeezed from tubes. By Gemini, scientists had improved space food substantially in taste and texture, but it was still freeze-dried or dehydrated, there wasn't great diversity in options.

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How did Apollo 13 go to the bathroom?

An curved arrow pointing right. There was no bathroom on the Apollo missions. Instead, NASA astronauts peed into a roll-on cuff, and pooped in bags that they kneaded, rolled up tight, and took back to Earth.

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Are you still awake when you blackout?

Passing Out. A blackout is not the same as “passing out,” which means either falling asleep or losing consciousness from drinking too much. During a blackout, a person is still awake but their brain is not creating new memories.

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Can you survive reentry?

Re-entry is a technologically challenging thing to survive, and even the smallest problem can escalate quickly, as the Columbia disaster taught us only too well. The main source of the problems with re-entry is that if you're orbiting the earth, you're going extremely fast.

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How do astronauts not burn up on reentry?

“The Shuttle used ceramic tiles to reradiate heat outwards, with a layer of insulation between the tiles and the vehicle,” says Anderson. The two principle factors that ensure a spacecraft can safely traverse the reentry corridor are the shape of the vehicle and its angle of reentry.

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Was Apollo 13 a human error?

NASA's subsequent investigation revealed that the No. 2 oxygen tank onboard Apollo 13 had been accidentally dropped during maintenance before the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, causing slight internal damage that didn't show up in later inspections.

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How did they stop the oxygen leak in Apollo 13?

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.

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What was false in Apollo 13 movie?

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.

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