What happened to the spacecraft Apollo 13?
On April 13, 1970, U.S. astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were en route to the Moon aboard Apollo 13 when one of the oxygen tanks in the ship exploded. The explosion damaged the fuel cells as well as the heat shield, which was needed to protect the craft during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The Apollo 13 crew immediately notified mission control on the ground. The astronauts and technicians brainstormed ways to get the crew safely home. No astronauts had ever been lost in space in the history of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), yet the prospects for a safe return of the Apollo 13 crew were daunting. Eventually they decided that the crew should move into the Lunar Module, a tiny spacecraft with only enough oxygen for two days for two men. Unfortunately, the astronauts were four days from home. In…
