To go far and beyond as past Apollo missions were the plans for the Apollo 13 mission, but with a sudden change of plans they only had one mission left, get back home safe and alive. They launched on April 11, 1970, orbiting around the moon and back to earth for five days, twenty-two hours, fifty-four minutes, and forty-one seconds, and landed back to Earth in the Pacific Ocean on April 17 1970. On the mission, the crew composed of James A. Lovell Jr. as commander, Charles M. Duke Jr. as Lunar Module Pilot, and John L. Swigert Jr. As Command Module Pilot. Originally Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly was to be part of the Apollo 13 crew, but when exposed to German measles, to which was unknown to his immunity, from backup crew Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke, he was replaced by John Swigert. The mission objective was to land in the Fra Mauro area on the moon.
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An explosion on board forced Apollo 13 to have to orbit around the moon. This mission's landing area was reassigned to Apollo 14. Even though the Apollo 13 mission never made it to the moon, as in fact they are the third lunar attempt to land on the moon, this mission was labeled as the “successful failure” because of the knowledge they gained while rescuing the crew. During the first two days, there were only minor problems but it was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. At 46 hours Joe Kerwin reported that everything was going perfectly. Even bored of it but that was the last time they'd say that. At 55 hours the crew had just finished a broadcast reporting how they were living and working well. Nine minutes later, oxygen tank No. 2 blew up leaving tank No. 1 to fail as well. With only 200,000 miles from Earth, their supply of electricity, light and water were cut. After a sharp bang and light accompanying the noise they reported, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Warning lights indicated the loss of two of three fuel cells, these were the prime source of energy for the spacecraft. After looking out the window three minutes in they notice they had been seeping out a gas into space, this was the oxygen from their last tank. After fifteen minutes they were assigned to move into the LM but ground control had to work on procedures to save the 2,181 ampere power they had left on the LM. Water usage was cut and they had to reserve to eating hotdogs and other wet pack foods leaving the crew dehydrated and in total losing 31.5 pounds, nearly 50 percent more than any other crew. Removing carbon dioxide was a concern too. But the square canister from the command module were not compatible with the round openings in the lunar module until after a day and a half when carbon levels were a most lethal, mission control devised a way to attach the canister to the LM system from material on board. Now the main concern was still how they were to return the crew back to Earth. Controls we transferred to the LM but with all the debris from the explosion they could not use the Alignment Optical Telescope, instead used the
An explosion on board forced Apollo 13 to have to orbit around the moon. This mission's landing area was reassigned to Apollo 14. Even though the Apollo 13 mission never made it to the moon, as in fact they are the third lunar attempt to land on the moon, this mission was labeled as the “successful failure” because of the knowledge they gained while rescuing the crew. During the first two days, there were only minor problems but it was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. At 46 hours Joe Kerwin reported that everything was going perfectly. Even bored of it but that was the last time they'd say that. At 55 hours the crew had just finished a broadcast reporting how they were living and working well. Nine minutes later, oxygen tank No. 2 blew up leaving tank No. 1 to fail as well. With only 200,000 miles from Earth, their supply of electricity, light and water were cut. After a sharp bang and light accompanying the noise they reported, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Warning lights indicated the loss of two of three fuel cells, these were the prime source of energy for the spacecraft. After looking out the window three minutes in they notice they had been seeping out a gas into space, this was the oxygen from their last tank. After fifteen minutes they were assigned to move into the LM but ground control had to work on procedures to save the 2,181 ampere power they had left on the LM. Water usage was cut and they had to reserve to eating hotdogs and other wet pack foods leaving the crew dehydrated and in total losing 31.5 pounds, nearly 50 percent more than any other crew. Removing carbon dioxide was a concern too. But the square canister from the command module were not compatible with the round openings in the lunar module until after a day and a half when carbon levels were a most lethal, mission control devised a way to attach the canister to the LM system from material on board. Now the main concern was still how they were to return the crew back to Earth. Controls we transferred to the LM but with all the debris from the explosion they could not use the Alignment Optical Telescope, instead used the