I recently watched the movie Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks Bill Paxton Ed Harris Kevin Bon and Gary sise it's a marvelous movie that is of course based on a true story I got me interested in looking a bit more into that true story and just what went on during the mission so here goes the Apollo 13 mission launched on the 11th of April 1970 was NASA's third planned mission to land on the moon however it became famous as a Successful Failure due to a critical malfunction that threatened the lives of the astronauts on board those astronauts were Commander James lville Command Module pilot John swager and Luna module pilot Fred Hayes their objective was to land in the ra Moro Highlands area of the [Music] Moon approximately 56 hours into the flight while on route to the Moon an oxygen tank in the service modul exploded this caused the loss of electrical power and led to the failure of several Key Systems the now famous phrase Houston we've had a problem was uttered by swet and later repeated by level signaling the star of the crisis interestingly the movie changed that line to be Houston we have a problem but there it is in the mission transcript as Houston we've had a problem the explosion made it impossible to continue with the Luna Landing the crew had to work with Mission Control in Houston to quickly develop and execute a plan to return safely to Earth the immedi iate challenges included maintaining life support systems conserving power and navigating back home without a functional service module the Luna module named Aquarius became a Lifeboat for the astronauts it was a risky move because the module was designed for shortterm use on the moon's surface not as a long-term life support system in Space the crew had to shut down the command module to conserve its battery power for re-entry and then rely on the Luna module for most of the journey back to Earth in addition to managing their ride home the astronauts also had to execute several critical Maneuvers including a burn using the Luna module's descent engine to adjust their trajectory why was this important well this was done to ensure that they would reenter Earth's atmosphere at the correct angle too steep an angle would burn them up while being too shallow would cause them to skip off the atmosphere and back into space after enduring significant hardships including freezing temperatures limited water and high levels of carbon dioxide the crew successfully re-entered Earth's atmosphere on the 17th of April 1917 they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean where they were quickly recovered by the USS EO G the mission demonstrated NASA's ability to handle crisis in space and significantly influenced future space missions safety protocols Apollo 13 is remembered today not for its failure to land on the moon but for the incredible teamwork Ingenuity and determination that brought the astronauts home safely [Music]