Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed missionHuman spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew.https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Human_spaceflight
Apollo 17 became the last manned mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. The main reason for this was money. The cost of getting to the Moon was, ironically, astronomical.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Apollo 13: "Houston, we've had a problem"
On the evening of April 13, when the crew was nearly 322,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) from Earth and closing in on the moon, mission controller Sy Liebergot saw a low-pressure warning signal on a hydrogen tank in Odyssey.
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.
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.
It's the story of the engine that brought those astronauts home, and the chemist who invented it. On April 13, 1970, Gerard Elverum's pintle injector rocket engine fired for 34 seconds to put the damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft on a safe path back to Earth.
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.
Haise, along with commander Jim Lovell, was supposed to walk on the moon during Apollo 13. That all changed on April 13, 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded and badly damaged the command module, Odyssey.
So, why haven't they sent humans back to the moon yet? The two primary causes are money and priorities. The race to put people on the moon was sparked in 1962 by US President John F. Kennedy's 'We Choose to Go to the Moon' address, in which he pledged that by the end of the decade, an American would walk on the moon'.
Images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have shown that the American flags left on the Moon by Apollo astronauts are still standing– except for the Apollo 11 mission, which Buzz Aldrin reported as being knocked over by engine exhaust as Apollo 11 lifted off.
Cost To Colonize the Moon
If you're talking about the colonization of the moon--and some people are--NASA astrobiologist Chris McCay estimates that a small, starter moon base could be had for as little as $10 billion.
Twelve men walked on the Moon during six Moon landings of the Apollo program between July 1969 and December 1972. All landed on the surface only once, and five missions consisted of two or more surface EVAs. Four of them are alive as of January 2023.
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. Telemetry was usually the first signal received after the blackout.
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were the first of 12 human beings to walk on the Moon. Four of America's moonwalkers are still alive: Aldrin (Apollo 11), David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17).
The command module, with the astronauts inside, continued onward, entered Earth's atmosphere, and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 pm Eastern Standard Time, 142 hours 54 minutes 41 seconds from the time the huge Saturn V had roared to life. The astronauts had no lasting ill effects from their ordeal.
The O2 tanks were stirred in order to get an accurate reading on the gauging systems, as the cryogenic oxygen tends to solidify in the tanks, and stirring allows for a more accurate reading on the quantity of O2 remaining in the tank. But this was not the first time the crew had been ordered to stir the tank.
Discussions between the Apollo 13 crew
According to Jim Lovell, there were no discussions or fights, as portrayed in the movie. The most important thing for the crew at that point was to focus on their greatest goal: to return home.
Finding an unlikely hero in duct tape, NASA's ground team helped the astronauts create an adapter using the tape to connect spacesuit hoses and tube socks, saving Haise, Lovell, and Swigert.
Space career
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).
Apollo 13 had now reached an altitude of more than 14,000 miles, and its velocity had slowed to 11,300 miles per hour as Earth's gravity continued its tug on the spacecraft.