Apollo 13 launched into space on April 11, 1970 on a nearly six-day mission that some mission leaders would later describe as a "successful failure." Although NASA lost three astronauts during a ground-based training mission for Apollo 1, this was the first time the space agency came close to losing a crew in space.
Apollo 13 was designed to ferry the third crew to walk on the Moon. On April 13, two days after launch, an oxygen tank aboard the spacecraft exploded. At the time of the incident, the three-man crew were 200,000 miles from Earth, well on their way to our lone natural satellite.
"Houston, we've had a problem," Jack Swigert reported to ground control following the blast.
Oxygen poured from the ruptured tank into empty space, leaving the vehicle with only the batteries in the command module to power every device.
Officials at NASA raced against time to develop and implement an emergency rescue plan for the crew, battling a lack of oxygen, too much carbon dioxide, and plummeting temperatures aboard the ship.
Commander Jim Lovell and lunar module pilot Fred W. Haise completed the crew, along with Swigert, the command module pilot.
The astronauts landed safely in the Pacific Ocean on April 17. The returning crew were greeted as heroes by the American public, many of whom had become engrossed in the ongoing story.
"There has never been a happier moment in the U.S. space program. Although the Apollo 13 mission must be regarded as a failure, there has never been a prouder moment in the U.S. space program," said then-NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine in 1970.
The problem was later traced to an accident which took place nearly three years earlier. In October 1968, a shelf holding a pair of oxygen tanks, including the one that exploded aboard Apollo 13, was being removed from another vehicle. Workers forgot to remove a single bolt before attempting to remove the board, which sprung back into place, jarring the equipment. At the time, it was considered a minor mishap and the tank was later utilized during the Apollo 13 mission.
Pre-flight testing revealed repeated problems with the device, which could fill correctly, but was unable to deliver a steady stream of the life-giving gas. A pair of fans and a heater were used in the tanks to maintain storage of the ultra-cold gas, and stir the material. A critical failsafe device failed, allowing the gas to be heated to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, melting insulation around wires. This resulted in an electrical spark, triggering the explosion.
The Adler Planetarium in Chicago scheduled a showing of "Mission Moon," a documentary film on the early days of the space program, to mark the 45th anniversary of the aborted mission.
This near-disaster in space was immortalized in the 1995 film Apollo 13.
