On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 returned to Earth after narrowly avoiding a deadly disaster in space.
This was supposed to be the third mission to land on the moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise launched on April 11 and were two days into their trip to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded, and NASA had to abort the mission. When the astronauts called mission control to report the incident, Swigert uttered the famous quote, "Houston, we've had a problem." With the service module running out of oxygen, they opted to use the lunar lander as a lifeboat. Because the oxygen was also used to power the spacecraft's fuel cells, they were also running out of power. They shut down all nonessential systems and turned down the heat, and spent four cold, miserable days heading back to Earth. They had to go back into the service module for reentry, and they didn't know if their heat shield had been damaged by the explosion. Luckily they survived reentry and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
This was supposed to be the third mission to land on the moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise launched on April 11 and were two days into their trip to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded, and NASA had to abort the mission. When the astronauts called mission control to report the incident, Swigert uttered the famous quote, "Houston, we've had a problem." With the service module running out of oxygen, they opted to use the lunar lander as a lifeboat. Because the oxygen was also used to power the spacecraft's fuel cells, they were also running out of power. They shut down all nonessential systems and turned down the heat, and spent four cold, miserable days heading back to Earth. They had to go back into the service module for reentry, and they didn't know if their heat shield had been damaged by the explosion. Luckily they survived reentry and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space. On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 returned to Earth after
00:07narrowly avoiding a deadly disaster in space. This was supposed to be the third
00:11mission to land on the moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Hayes
00:16launched on April 11th and were two days into their trip to the moon when an
00:19oxygen tank exploded and NASA had to abort the mission. When the astronauts
00:23called Mission Control to report the incident, Swigert uttered the famous
00:26quote, Houston, we've had a problem. With the service module running out of
00:33oxygen, they opted to use the lunar lander as a lifeboat. Because the oxygen was
00:37also used to power the spacecraft's fuel cells, they were also running out of
00:41power. They shut down all non-essential systems and turned down the heat and
00:45spent four cold miserable days heading back to Earth. They had to go back into
00:50the service module for re-entry and they didn't know if their heat shield had been
00:53damaged by the explosion. Luckily, they survived re-entry and safely splashed
00:58down in the Pacific Ocean. And that's what happened on this day in space.