On a day like today, but 54 years ago, NASA's Apollo XIII spacecraft took off to the Moon, which was to become the third moon landing for humanity.
The mission was not completed, but the agency ended up classifying it as a “successful failure” because the combined efforts of the ground team and crew managed to save the lives of the three astronauts who were on board.
Two days after takeoff, on April 13, 1970, nothing seemed to predict what was going to happen. In fact, as NASA reports on the page dedicated to the mission, Apollo 13 seemed the quietest mission to date in the space exploration program.
The person in charge of communications from the ground,
Joe Kerwin
, even joked: “The ship is in very good shape, from what we see. “We are bored down here.”
Nine hours later,
oxygen tank number 2 exploded and disabled the service module
, which provided power, oxygen and water to the command module, which is where the astronauts traveled.
The ship was more than 300,000 kilometers from Earth.
John Swigert
, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 13, saw the alarm lights and contacted the ground team in Houston, United States.
It was then that he uttered the famous phrase “ Houston, we've had a problem
here
.
”
The conversation continued with aeronautical engineer
Jack Lousma
responding from Houston, "Houston here. Repeat, please." That's when Lovell spoke up and answered: "
Houston, we've had a
problem
.
"
The phrase "
Houston, we have a problem"
arose
in
the 1995 film Apollo 13 from the phrases of Swigert and Lovell.
How the Apollo 13 mission ended
NASA engineers then dedicated themselves to finding an emergency solution so that the astronauts could return to Earth safely.
In order to have power for re-entry to Earth, the crew had to completely disconnect the command module and use the power from the lunar module, which was to land on the satellite, as an emergency resource.
Without the lunar module, the accident would have been fatal
.
The accident made it impossible to attempt a moon landing
, but the ship had already passed a point in the journey from which they could not change course to return to Earth. Thus, they had to maneuver – orienting themselves thanks to the Sun – to surround the Moon and obtain the gravitational impulse necessary for the return.
The return trip was hard. The Apollo 13 crew had to strictly ration food and water, as they only had the limited reserves of the lunar module. They also had to turn off the heating; The cold they experienced during the rest of the mission made it virtually impossible for them to sleep.
The Apollo 13 command module finally landed in the Pacific Ocean six days after takeoff, with
all the astronauts alive
.
Main source: La Vanguardia.