By: Reanna Chowdhury
The Apollo Space Program has had its ups and downs. There was Apollo 1, where the entire crew had burned to death during a trial flight. Nevertheless, this downcasting incident did not discourage NASA, but it rather impelled them to work harder. Successive to Apollo 1, a plethora of successful missions had occurred, allowing 24 men to go to the moon, 12 of which had received the opportunity to step foot on it. Out of all of them, Apollo 13 has the most intriguing story; even a movie was created about it in which Tom Hanks plays the captain. It was the seventh human-bearing mission in the Apollo Program and NASA’s third mission meant to land on the moon. Numerous things went awry, which is what any superstitious person would expect from a mission with the number 13 in its name. To add to the unluckiness, it launched at 2:13 PM. NASA has dubbed Apollo 13 “a successful failure”. Read on to discover why.
NASA had meticulously excogitated this voyage. They would send three astronauts to space: Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise. Jim Lovell was among the most seasoned astronauts at that time. He was the first person to fly to the moon twice and is one of only three astronauts that have ever done so. Lovell was a part of the Apollo 8 crew. During the mission, he flew to the moon and named a mountain “Mount Merilyn” after his wife. He was the captain of Apollo 13 and wasn’t even nervous about this trip, so NASA was confident that the whole expedition was in good hands. Nevertheless, the first mishap of Apollo 13 transpired a few days prior to lift-off when the crew was exposed to measles. Jim Lovell and Fred Haise had already gotten measles in their childhoods. Mattingly however, was not as fortunate. It was his first time being subjected to measles, so he was not permitted to go on this travel. They had to fetch his backup, Jack Swigert. Nonetheless, Mattingly was still able to contribute to this expedition as an engineer back on our planet.
Caption: Lovell, Swigert, Haise
On April 11, 1970, the Saturn V rocket took off with the Apollo 13 trio. Before they even managed to exit the Earth’s atmosphere, about ¼ of a mile from Earth, one of their five engines stopped running. They had to turn it off right away or else this malfunctioning engine would destroy the entire spaceship. Luckily, this is the centermost engine and not one of the side ones. The center one is not as crucial. They make up for the dead engine by simply accelerating the power on the remaining four.
Believing that the worst was over with, the team recommenced their optimism about this journey. It’s exhilarating because they were on the verge of doing something never performed before! Apollo 11 and 12 had both landed on the moon, however, both of them landed on the exact same spot and that spot was not geologically engrossing. Apollo 13 is scheduled to land on a site called Fra Mauro in the Northern Hemisphere. This site is rugged and will make landing difficult, however, it is worthwhile attempting to explore due to the trove of geological data it retains.
Approximately 56 hours into their mission when they were 330,000 kilometres away from Earth, they heard a loud bang, their electrical power began to waver, and thrusters on the exterior of the ship fired briefly in a way they were not supposed to. Following these mischances, Jack Swigert transmitted a message down to Earth. This line became one of the most renowned uttered in outer space, second to only Neil Armstrong’s: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” These words were “Houston, we've had a problem.” Their electrical power continued depleting and their second oxygen reservoir was vacant. Everyone was baffled, they assumed a minuscule meteorite had struck them when what had actually occurred was that one of their oxygen tanks had ruptured. Three minutes later, two more fuel cells crashed and the electricity drained even further to deleteriously low levels. Out the window, the astronauts observed that the spacecraft was leaking out a gas, most likely oxygen. Within the span of two hours, their primary oxygen tank was entirely empty as well!
As you can tell, this situation was utterly minacious, so Gene Kranz, the Lead Flight Director, ordered the astronauts to disengage from this mission and return back to Earth. In the meantime, engineers on Earth were scampering around searching for a means to supply the ship with sufficient power to make it home. The spacecraft had three parts to it: the command, service, and lunar module. The service module was normally essential for returning home but was inoperable so the engineers had to find a way to work without it.
Caption: Saturn V diagram
The engineers fell back on an abort plan initially devised in 1966 but never implemented. To conserve power, the crew deactivated all systems in the command module, the segment of the spacecraft that astronauts typically reside in, and moved into the lunar module which would be utilized as a lifeboat to get back to Earth. But prior to turning off the command module and emigrating, they had to transfer all the pertinent information from the command module computer to a computer in the lunar module. This was not as straightforward to do in these olden-day computers as it is right now on modern ones. The two computers did not have the same coordinate system, so Lovell frustratingly translated all the data from one computer to another by hand while the entire ship was collapsing around him. He had to do innumerable calculations and input the results one at a time into the computer in the lunar module. Once that was done, they had to endure the discomfort of the cramped conditions of the lunar module. It was designed to carry two people for a day and a half, but the three of them had to be in it for four days. It’s also very difficult to pilot the vehicle from the lunar module because the spacecraft was never designed to do so. The navigation system was also down so Lovell attempted to use the stars to figure out their current position and where they should steer to next. Annoyingly, all around their ship were fragments of detritus from all the explosions and breakdowns of the ship. Lovell could not distinguish between a piece of foil and a star, so he had to ditch this navigation idea. What he ended up doing was employing merely the Sun, moon, and Earth to navigate because those were the only celestial objects he could explicitly view.
Meanwhile, NASA engineers identified the optimal trajectory for bringing the astronauts home. However, all was not well yet. The lunar module had ample doses of oxygen, but a dearth of lithium hydroxide. Lithium hydroxide removes the carbon dioxide the astronauts exhale from the spacecraft’s atmosphere. Without enough lithium hydroxide, the astronauts will perish from carbon dioxide poisoning. The spacecraft had stockpiles of lithium hydroxide that could fix this problem. Alas, these reserves were in an area of the ship that was unreachable to the astronauts. Luckily, there are canisters of lithium hydroxide in the command module which the crew can access! But there’s a catch. These cartridges are cube-shaped and can not fit into the cylindrical sockets of the lunar module. Merely hours before the trio would run out of clean air, the brilliant engineers on Earth found a solution using the materials on-board the spaceship! The crew was ordered to utilize whatever they could accumulate: duck tape, parts of their spacesuit, and old socks to fashion an adapter for the cube-shaped canister. This was a success! They were freezing since they had to turn off the heater to save power, but besides that, things were looking up!
They were very close to Earth; there was one only final hurdle they must conquer. To land, they must turn the command module back on, re-enter it, and then detach the command module from the lunar module. If the two modules don’t split, they would both be set ablaze when entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Turning on all the systems in the command module was difficult due to three main reasons. Firstly, the cold temperatures engendered condensation in the spacecraft, so when the power was turned on, it could cause calamitous electrical shorts. Secondly, they had a paucity of electricity. Thirdly, the command module was not designed to be turned back on once it is fully shut down. But NASA had collaborated with the University of Toronto and found a solution to all these problems mere hours before the crew reached Earth’s atmosphere. If the figures they had come up with were a bit off, the astronauts were dead meat. Fortunately, the calculations were on point and the crew merrily splashed into the Pacific Ocean, southeast of an island named American Samoa! The U.S. Navy retrieved them and their half-wrecked spacecraft.
Now, do you understand why NASA has termed this voyage a “successful failure”? Although they had failed to achieve their initial goal, which was to land on the moon, they achieved many other things that no one had thought possible. It was not supposed to be possible to survive under such circumstances, however, the engineers and astronauts improvised and figured everything out, making this mission one of the most memorable in history!
