People at Mission Control hoped this would be the mission’s biggest glitch. To get the ship into orbit, that stage’s other engines had to burn 34 seconds, while Stage 3 had to fire for nine extra seconds longer. Then, during the liftoff, the center engine of Stage 2 cut off two minutes early. His backup, Swigert, joined the team with little time to work alongside his new crewmates before the mission began. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly was exposed to German measles and grounded. Navy divers pose with the Command Module (now held in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum) after it is recovered at sea in April of 1970.Īpollo 13 suffered its first unexpected issue two days before liftoff. It was just problem after problem after problem.” “It’s hard to believe that they were able to come back from the moon and to continually solve all the different problems that arose. “It’s one of those stories where they were able to overcome all sorts of odds, and it’s an extraordinary adventure story,” says Smithsonian curator Teasel Muir-Harmony, from the National Air and Space Museum and home of Apollo 13’s command module, now on loan to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. For days, they lived in refrigerator-like temperatures with only six ounces of water available for each man per day, and yet, these daring men in their crippled space capsule never gave up. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise knew that their chances of returning safely to Earth were poor. The heartbeats of earthbound humans quickened listening to broadcasts of the three men as they spoke to Mission Control in their unwavering, matter-of-fact fighter pilot voices. For most of second week of April in 1970, the whole world watched as the exhausted, underfed and dehydrated Apollo 13 astronauts fought for their lives after an on-board explosion rendered their mission to the Moon unattainable.
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