In about two hours time it will be fifty years since the Apollo 13 mission suffered a major failure with the explosion of an oxygen tank on the Command Ship. The crisis began on April 14 1970, 2:07;53 pm (NZST) – April 13 at 10:07;53 pm EST – as the astronauts were travelling to the moon for what was supposed to have been the third moon landing, aiming at the Fra Mauro highlands.

R->L: Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, Fred Haise

Apollo 13 was going to be the first geological mission after NASA had proved it could land with Apollo 11, and then with Apollo 12 that it could land precisely enough to allow landings in mountainous areas.

But it was not to be. Instead, the service module was disabled by an exploding oxygen tank and the mission had to use the lunar module – call sign Aquarius – as a rescue ship to fly around the moon and back to Earth. Desperate jury-rigging was needed to solve the CO2 problems and re-start a cold, frozen Command Module in time to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere.

The damage to the Service Module
caused by the explosion.

Apollo 13 was a set back and forced the next mission, Apollo 14, to effectively prove all over again that NASA could land on the moon and return safely to the Earth. One geologist described that mission as the nadir of his career as its commander, Al Shepard, made it clear that his focus was not going to be geology. That would have to wait for Apollo 15.

The irony was that orginally Al Shepard and his crew were slated for the Apollo 13 mission, but nine months before the flight they were swapped with Lovell and his Apollo 14 crew. The official reason was that Shepard’s ear probem had flared up again, but it was always suspected that NASA managers were worried about sending to the Moon an astronaut with just 15 minutes spaceflight experience from his sub-orbital Mercury mission eight years earlier and wanted more training time. God knows what they would have thought if he’d still been in charge of ’13.

Thanks to NASA software engineer, historian and super nerd Ben Fiest an incredible website has been developed that tracks the entire mission from start to finish with all the recorded conversations in Mission Control, even during the quiet times. And that includes some of the conversations of various NASA people as they phone in from their homes to check up on things. On the website you can listen in from one minute before launch or simply click on “NOW”to hear everything in real time.

A screenshot is provided below. As of this screenshot it’s amusing to hear how quiet and relaxed everything is – “smooth” – as the controllers chat amongst themselves – and over other conversations too. I suggest that you start listening at 55 hours 52 minutes (55:52) Mission Elapsed Time if you want to listen to the crew and MC dealing with the problem.

Apollo 13 in Real Time

Two of the mission’s astronauts are still alive, Commander Jim Lovell, 92, and LM Pilot Fred Haise, 86. Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert died of respiratory failure in 1982 at age 51, seven weeks before he was to start his first term as a U.S. congressman.

I appreciated the following comment about the mission:

Today the innovative solutions used during Apollo 13 are studied as part of NASA’s Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program, said Mike Ciannilli, the program manager. 

“They started prioritizing very quickly what had to be done, protecting resources on board, preventing any more accidents,” Ciannilli said. 

He said some of the accident’s biggest lessons related to time management during an emergency, the importance of good communication and diversity of opinion. 

“You can learn from success or failure. When it comes to Apollo 13, we’re still learning from both, and that’s why you often hear it described as a successful failure,” Ciannilli said.

You can also listen to a superb BBC Podcast series from 2019 about the first Lunar Landing with Thirteen Minutes To The Moon.

Or you can just kick back and watch the great 1995 movie about the mission, Apollo 13.