Apollo 13 had some trouble while it was in space. When it was up there one of the oxygen tanks had exploded and it was a matter of lie and death for the crew to return safely.
Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the lunar region of Fra Mauro, but this
landing site was later reassigned toApollo 14.Apollo 13 was supposed to land in
the lunar region of Fra Mauro, but this landing site was later reassigned
toApollo 14.
'The
Successful Failure'
Mission
Apollo
XIII
Crew
James
Lovell Jr.
John Swigert Jr.
Fred Haise Jr.
Lift Off
Saturn V
April 11,1970
2:13 p.m. EST
KSC, Florida
Complex 39-A
Tank
Rupture
April
13,1970
9:08 p.m. EST
Lunar
Landing
ABORTED
Splash-
down
April
17,1970
1:07 p.m. EST
Pacific Ocean
Duration
5 days,
22 hours,
54 minutes
Apollo 13 was supposed to
land in the lunar region of Fra Mauro, but this landing site was later
reassigned to
Apollo 14.
At 46 hours, 43 minutes
mission elapsed time, Joe Kerwin, the CAPCOM on duty, said, "The
spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We're bored
to tears down here." Nine hours, 12 minutes later, a Service Module
oxygen tank blew up aboard Apollo 13. The Command Module's normal supply
of electricity, light and water was lost, and they were about 321,869
kilometers (200,000 miles) from Earth.
James Lovell Jr. gasped, "Hey
Houston, we've had a problem here." While looking outside, Lovell
reported to Houston, "We are venting something out into the- into
space". Jack Lousma, the CAPCOM replied, "Roger, we copy you venting."
Lovell said, "It's a gas of some sort." It was oxygen gas escaping at a
high rate from the second, and last, oxygen tank.
A formidable task ahead for
both crew and ground control, plans now changed. The crew moved to the
Lunar Module to escape the decreasing air pressure in the Service
Module. The crew had to conserve food and water. To get around the Moon
and then go home, the Lunar and Command Modules needed to conserve fuel.
Due to debris from the
explosion, the navigation system was unreliable. The crew used the Sun
as a navigation point to guide the crippled craft back to Earth. While
enduring discomfort and little sleep, the crew moved back into the cold
Command Module, then ejected both the Lunar and Service Modules. After
re-entry, the crew landed safely in the Pacific Ocean almost four days
after the explosion.
Apollo
13 was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area. An explosion on
board forced Apollo
13 to circle the moon
without landing. The Fra Mauro site was reassigned to Apollo
14.
Launch:
Saturday, April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST.
At five and a half minutes after liftoff, Swigert, Haise, and
Lovell felt a little vibration. Then the center engine of the S-II
stage shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining four
engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third
stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo
13 in orbit.
Days before the mission, backup LM pilot Charlie Duke
inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles. Command module
pilot, Ken Mattingly, turned out to have no immunity to measles and
was replaced by backup command module pilot Jack Swigert.
Ground tests before launch, indicated the possibility of a poorly
insulated supercritical helium tank in the LM's descent stage so the
flight plan was modified to enter the LM three hours early in order
to obtain an onboard readout of helium tank pressure.
The No. 2 oxygen tank, serial number 10024X-TA0009 had been
previously installed in the service module of Apollo
10, but was removed for modification (and was damaged in the
process of removal). The tank was fixed, tested at the factory,
installed in the Apollo 13 service module. and tested again during
the Countdown Demonstration Test (CDT) at the Kennedy
Space Center.beginning March 16, 1970. The tanks normally are
emptied to about half full, and No. 1 behaved all right. But No. 2
dropped to only 92 percent of capacity. Gaseous oxygen at 80 psi was
applied through the vent line to expel the liquid oxygen, but to no
avail. An interim discrepancy report was written, and on March 27,
two weeks before launch, detanking operations were resumed. No. 1
again emptied normally, but No. 2 did not. After a conference with
contractor and NASA personnel, the test director decided to
"boil off" the remaining oxygen in No. 2 by using the
electrical heater within the tank. The technique worked, but it took
eight hours of 65-volt DC power from the ground-support equipment to
dissipate the oxygen. Due to an oversight in replacing an underrated
component during a design modification, this turned out to severely
damage the internal heating elements of the tank.
Orbit:
Altitude: xxx miles
Inclination: xxx degrees
Orbits:
Duration: 05 Days, 22 hours, 54 min, seconds
Distance: miles
Lunar Location: None
Lunar Coords: None
Landing:
April 17, 1970
Mission Highlights:
Third lunar landing attempt. Mission was aborted after rupture of
service module oxygen tank. Classed as "successful
failure" because of experience in rescuing crew. Spent upper
stage successfully impacted on the Moon.
The first two days the crew ran into a couple of minor surprises,
but generally Apollo
13 was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. At 46
hours 43 minutes Joe Kerwin, the CapCom on duty, said, "The
spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We're
bored to tears down here." It was the last time anyone would
mention boredom for a long time.
At 55 hours 46 minutes, as the crew finished a 49-minute TV
broadcast showing how comfortably they lived and worked in
weightlessness, Lovell stated: "This is the crew of Apollo
13 wishing everybody there a nice evening, and we're just about
ready to close out our inspection of Aquarius (the LM) and get back
for a pleasant evening in Odyssey (the CM). Good night."
Nine minutes later, Oxygen tank No. 2 blew up, causing No. 1 tank
also to fail. The Apollo
13 command modules normal supply of electricity, light, and
water was lost, and they were about 200,000 miles from Earth.
The message came in the form of a sharp bang and vibration. Jack
Swigert saw a warning light that accompanied the bang, and said,
"Houston, we've had a problem here." Lovell came on and
told the ground that it was a main B bus undervolt. The time was
2108 hours on April 13.
Next, the warning lights indicated the loss of two of Apollo
13's three fuel cells, which were the spacecrafts prime source
of electricity. With warning lights blinking on, One Oxygen tank
appeared to be completely empty, and there were indications that the
oxygen in the second tank was rapidly being depleted.
Thirteen minutes after the explosion, Lovell happened to look out
of the left-hand window, and saw the final evidence pointing toward
potential catastrophe. "We are venting something out into the-
into space," he reported to Houston. Jack Lousma, the CapCom
replied, "Roger, we copy you venting." Lovell said,
"It's a gas of some sort." It was oxygen gas escaping at a
high rate from the second, and last, oxygen tank.
(by James A. Lovell, from Apollo Expeditions to the Moon,
edited
by Edgar M. Cortright, NASA SP; 350, Washington, DC, 1975 )
The first thing the crew did, even before discovering the oxygen
leak, was to try to close the hatch between the CM and the LM. They
reacted spontaneously, like submarine crews, closing the hatches to
limit the amount of flooding. First Jack and then Lovell tried to
lock the reluctant hatch, but the stubborn lid wouldn't stay shut.
Exasperated, and realizing that there wasn't a cabin leak, they
strapped the hatch to the CM couch.
The pressure in the No. 1 oxygen tank continued to drift downward;
passing 300 psi, now heading toward 200 psi. Months later, after the
accident investigation was complete, it was determined that, when
No. 2 tank blew up, it either ruptured a line on the No. 1 tank, or
caused one of the valves to leak. When the pressure reached 200 psi,
the crew and ground controllers knew that they would lose all
oxygen, which meant that the last fuel cell would also die.
At 1 hour and 29 seconds after the bang, Jack Lousma, then CapCom,
said after instructions from Flight Director Glynn Lunney: "It
is slowly going to zero, and we are starting to think about the LM
lifeboat." Swigert replied, "That's what we have been
thinking about too."
Ground controllers in Houston faced a formidable task. Completely
new procedures had to be written and tested in the simulator before
being passed up to the crew. The navigation problem had to be
solved; essentially how, when, and in what attitude to burn the LM
descent engine to provide a quick return home.
With only 15 minutes of power left in the CM, CapCom told the crew
to make their way into the LM. Fred and Jim Lovell quickly floated
through the tunnel, leaving Jack to perform the last chores in the
Command Module. The first concern was to determine if there were
enough consumables to get home? The LM was built for only a 45-hour
lifetime, and it needed to be stretch to 90. Oxygen wasn't a
problem. The full LM descent tank alone would suffice, and in
addition, there were two ascent-engine oxygen tanks, and two
backpacks whose oxygen supply would never be used on the lunar
surface. Two emergency bottles on top of those packs had six or
seven pounds each in them. (At LM jettison, just before reentry,
28.5 pounds of oxygen remained, more than half of what was available
after the explosion).
Power was also a concern. There were 2181 ampere hours in the LM
batteries, Ground controllers carefully worked out a procedure where
the CM batteries were charged with LM power. All non-critical
systems were turned off and energy consumption was reduced to a
fifth of normal, which resulted in having 20 percent of our LM
electrical power left when Aquarius was jettisoned. There was one
electrical close call during the mission. One of the CM batteries
vented with such force that it momentarily dropped off the line. Had
the battery failed, there would be insufficient power to return the
ship to Earth.
Water was the main consumable concern. It was estimated that the
crew would run out of water about five hours before Earth
reentry, which was calculated at around 151 hours. However, data
from Apollo 11 (which had not sent its LM ascent stage crashing into
the Moon
as in subsequent missions) showed that its mechanisms could survive
seven or eight hours in space without water cooling. The crew
conserved water. They cut down to six ounces each per day, a fifth
of normal intake, and used fruit juices; they ate hot dogs and other
wet-pack foods when they ate at all. The crew became dehydrated
throughout the flight and set a record that stood up throughout
Apollo: Lovell lost fourteen pounds, and the crew lost a total of
31.5 pounds, nearly 50 percent more than any other crew. Those
stringent measures resulted in the crew finishing with 28.2 pounds
of water, about 9 percent of the total.
Removal of Carbon Dioxide was also a concern. There were enough
lithium hydroxide canisters, which remove carbon dioxide from the
spacecraft, but the square canisters from the Command Module were
not compatible with the round openings in the Lunar Module
environmental system. There were four cartridge from the LM, and
four from the backpacks, counting backups. However, the LM was
designed to support two men for two days and was being asked to care
for three men nearly four days. After a day and a half in the LM a
warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a
dangerous level. Mission Control devised a way to attach the CM
canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags, cardboard, and
tape- all materials carried on board.
One of the big questions was, "How to get back safely to
Earth?" The LM navigation system wasn't designed to help us in
this situation. Before the explosion, at 30 hours and 40 minutes, Apollo
13 had made the normal midcourse correction, which would take it
out of a free-return-to-Earth trajectory and put it on a lunar
landing course. Now the task was to get back on a free-return
course. The ground computed a 35-second burn and fired it 5 hours
after the explosion. As they approached the Moon,
another burn was computed; this time a long 5-minute burn to speed
up the return home. It took place 2 hours after rounding the far
side of the Moon,
The Command Module navigational platform alignment was transferred
to the LM but verifying alignment was difficult. Ordinarily the
alignment procedure uses an onboard sextant device, called the
Alignment Optical Telescope, to find a suitable navigation star.
Then with the help of the onboard computer verify the guidance
platform's alignment. However, due to the explosion, a swarm of
debris from the ruptured service module made it impossible to sight
real stars. An alternate procedure was developed to use the sun as
an alignment star. Lovell rotated the spacecraft to the attitude
Houston had requested and when he looked through the AOT, the Sun
was just where it was expected. The alignment with the Sun proved to
be less than a half a degree off. The ground and crew then knew they
could do the 5-minute P.C. + 2 burn with assurance, and that would
cut the total time of our voyage to about 142 hours. At 73:46 hours
the air-to-ground transcript describes the event:
Lovell: O.K. We got it. I think we got it. What diameter
was it?
Haise: Yes. It's coming back in. Just a second.
Lovell: Yes, yaw's coming back in. Just about it.
Haise: Yaw is in....
Lovell: What have you got?
Haise: Upper right corner of the Sun....
Lovell: We've got it!
If we raised our voices, I submit it was justified.
"I'm told the cheer of the year went up in Mission Control.
Flight Director Gerald Griffin, a man not easily shaken, recalls:
"Some years later I went back to the log and looked up that
mission. My writing was almost illegible I was so damned nervous.
And I remember the exhilaration running through me: My God, that's
kinds the last hurdle -- if we can do that, I know we can make it.
It was funny, because only the people involved knew how important it
was to have that platform properly aligned." Yet Gerry Griffin
barely mentioned the alignment in his change-of-shift briefing --
"That check turned out real well" is all he said an hour
after his penmanship failed him.
James A. Lovell ( Apollo Expeditions to the Moon,
edited by
Edgar M. Cortright, NASA SP; 350, Washington, DC, 1975 )
The trip was marked by discomfort beyond the lack of food and
water. Sleep was almost impossible because of the cold. When the
electrical systems were turned off, the spacecraft lost and
important source of heat. The temperature dropped to 38 F and
condensation formed on all the walls.
A most remarkable achievement of Mission Control was quickly
developing procedures for powering up the CM after its long cold
sleep. Flight controllers wrote the documents for this innovation in
three days, instead of the usual three months. The Command Module
was cold and clammy at the start of power up. The walls, ceiling,
floor, wire harnesses, and panels were all covered with droplets of
water. It was suspected conditions were the same behind the panels.
The chances of short circuits caused apprehension, but thanks to the
safeguards built into the command module after the disastrous Apollo-1
fire in January 1967, no arcing took place. The droplets furnished
one sensation as we decelerated in the atmosphere: it rained inside
the CM.
Four hours before landing, the crew shed the service module;
Mission Control had insisted on retaining it until then because
everyone feared what the cold of space might do to the unsheltered
CM heat shield. Photos of the Service Module showed one whole panel
missing, and wreckage hanging out, it was a sorry mess as it drifted
away. Three hours later the crew left the Lunar Module Aquarius and
then splashed down gently in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa,
After an intensive investigation, the Apollo
13 Accident Review Board identified the cause of the explosion.
In 1965 the CM had undergone many improvements, which included
raising the permissible voltage to the heaters in the oxygen tanks
from 28 to 65 volts DC. Unfortunately, the thermostatic switches on
these heaters weren't modified to suit the change. During one final
test on the launch pad, the heaters were on for a long period of
time. "This subjected the wiring in the vicinity of the heaters
to very high temperatures (1000 F), which have been subsequently
shown to severely degrade teflon insulation. The thermostatic
switches started to open while powered by 65 volts DC and were
probably welded shut." Furthermore, other warning signs during
testing went unheeded and the tank, damaged from 8 hours
overheating, was a potential bomb the next time it was filled with
oxygen. That bomb exploded on April 13, 1970 -- 200,000 miles from
Earth.
The Apollo program was an American spaceflight endeavor that landed the
first humans on Earth's Moon.
Apollo Program
AstronautHarrison
H. Schmitton December 13,
1972, during theApollo
17mission, the last human lunar landing to date
November 7, 1962 - July 13, 1974
The Apollo program was an American spaceflight endeavor that
landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the presidency of
Dwight D. Eisenhower and conducted by NASA, Apollo began in earnest after
President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961 special address to a joint session of
Congress declaring a national goal of "landing a man on the Moon" by the end of
the decade.
This goal was accomplished with the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969 when
astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, while Michael
Collins remained in lunar orbit. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed
astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six Apollo
spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon. These are the only times humans
have landed on another celestial body.[3]
The Apollo program ran from 1961 until 1975, and was the US civilian space
agency's third human spaceflight program (following Mercury and Gemini). Apollo
used Apollo spacecraft and Saturn launch vehicles, which were later used for the
Skylab program and the joint American-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. These
subsequent programs are thus often considered part of the Apollo program.
The program was accomplished with only two major setbacks. The first was the
Apollo 1 launch pad fire that resulted in the deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom,
Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The second was an oxygen tank rupture on Apollo 13
during the moonward phase of its journey, which disabled the command spacecraft.
The three astronauts aboard narrowly escaped with their lives, thanks to the
efforts of flight controllers, project engineers, backup crew members and the
skills of the astronauts.
Apollo set major milestones in human spaceflight. It stands alone in sending
manned missions beyond low Earth orbit; Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft
to orbit another celestial body, while Apollo 17 marked the last moonwalk and
the last manned mission beyond low Earth orbit. The program spurred advances in
many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and manned spaceflight,
including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. Apollo sparked interest
in many fields of engineering and left many physical facilities and machines
developed for the program as landmarks. Many objects and artifacts from the
program are on display at locations throughout the world, notably in the
Smithsonian's Air and Space Museums.
Partial Success-
Unmanned suborbital flight was the first test flight of Saturn 1B and of the
Apollo Command and Service Modules; problems included a fault in the
electrical power system and a 30 percent decrease in pressure to the service
module engine 80 seconds after firing.
Success-
command module reentry test successful, even though reentry was very
uncontrolled. Informally proposed as Apollo 3, this name was never approved.
Failure-
never launched: command module destroyed and three astronauts killed on 27
January 1967 by fire in the module during a test exercise - Retroactively,
the mission's name was officially changed to "Apollo 1" after the fire.
Although it was scheduled to be the fourth Apollo mission (and despite the
fact that NASA planned to call the mission AS-204), the flight patch worn by
the three astronauts, which was approved by NASA in June 1966, already
referred to the mission as "Apollo 1"
Success-
first flight of lunar module (LM); multiple space tests of LM, no command or
service module flown; no controlled reentry. Used the Saturn 1B originally
slated for the cancelled manned AS-204 ("Apollo 1") mission
Partial success-
severe oscillations during orbital insertion, several engines failing during
flight, successful reentry of command module (though mission parameters for
a 'worst case' reentry scenario could not be achieved)
Success-
eleven-day manned Earth orbit, command module testing (no lunar module),
some minor crew and illness issues (all three men caught the same head-cold
and reported stress).
Success-
ambitious mission profile (changed relatively shortly before launch), first
human lunar orbit (no lunar module), first earthrise seen by men and major
publicity success, some minor sleeping and illness issues
Success-
second manned lunar flight; first test of lunar module in lunar orbit;
"dress rehearsal" for first landing, coming to 8.4 nautical miles (15.6 km)
to the Moon's surface
Success-
mission almost aborted after lightning struck at launch with brief loss of
fuel cells and telemetry; successful landing within walking distance (less
than 200 meters) of theSurveyor
3probe; two EVAs
Partial Failure[30]-
early shutdown of inboard S-II engine; unrelated oxygen tank rupture in
service module during Earth-Moon transition caused mission to be aborted -
crew took temporary refuge in the lunar module and returned safely to Earth
after a single pass around the Moon.
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