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.
But in 1970 future Apollo missions were cancelled. 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.
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) failed two days into the mission.
NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine announced on Sept. 2 that budgetary constraints compelled him to cancel Apollo missions 15 and 19, and designated the remaining flights as Apollo 14 through 17.
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 ...
Less than two years earlier, on Jan. 27, 1967, the three crew members of Apollo 1 — Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee — were killed in a fire on the launchpad during a preflight test at Cape Kennedy, Fla.
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.
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.
Schirra really wasn't on us as bad as it seemed at the time. ... Bottom line was, even with a grumpy commander, we got the job done as a team." None of the Apollo 7 crew members flew in space again.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The mission concluded on March 13 and was a complete success. It proved the LM worthy of crewed spaceflight, setting the stage for the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing, Apollo 10, before the ultimate goal, landing on the Moon.
Of the 109 lunar missions during the period, 61 were successful and 48 had failed, it stated.
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.
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).
During the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, astronauts would go to a somewhat private spot on the spaceship, put on the condom-like pouch, and attach a rubber transfer tube with a tank at the end to dispose of their liquid waste. The entire process took a whopping 45 minutes.
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.
We'll spoil it for you, now: It totally worked. (meaning: It didn't explode.) Using the same Apollo Guidance Computer (the brains of the operation) created by Draper for the Apollo 1 mission, the Apollo 4 mission launched without any “major” issues from Kennedy Space Center.
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.
Space Shuttle Challenger breaks up during its 1986 launch resulting in the death of all seven crew members.
STS-51-L: Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
The space shuttle Challenger disaster that occurred on January 28, 1986, marked one of the most devastating days in the history of space exploration.
The Challenger disaster remains perhaps the most notorious in the history of spaceflight, owing to the number of people, many of them schoolchildren, who saw it live on TV. In 2003 a further seven astronauts died when the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.