Apollo 13 facts for kids

The Apollo 13 crew. From left to right: Lovell, Swigert, and Haise. April 1970

Apollo 13 was the seventh mission of NASA's Project Apollo and the third manned lunar-lander mission. The flight was commanded by Jim Lovell. The other astronauts on board were Jack Swigert and Fred Haise.

The craft was launched successfully toward the Moon, but two days after launch a faulty oxygen tank exploded, and the Service Module became damaged, causing a loss of oxygen and electrical power. There was a very large chance that the astronauts would die before they could return to Earth. They were very short of oxygen. Oxygen is not just used to breathe, on the Apollo spacecraft it was used in a device called a Fuel cell to generate electricity. So they conserved their remaining air by turning off almost all their electrical equipment, including heaters. It became very cold in the spacecraft.

In order to stay alive the astronauts also had to move into the Apollo Lunar Module and make it work as a sort of "lifeboat".

When they approached the Earth they were not sure that their parachutes, needed to slow the Command Module down, would work. The parachutes were thrown out by small explosive charges that were fired by batteries. The cold could have made the batteries fail, in which case the parachutes would not work and the Command Module would hit the ocean so fast that all aboard would be killed.

The flight

Apollo blasted off on the 11th April 1970 at 19:13 UTC from Cape Canaveral and went into temporary low Earth orbit. Two hours later they fired the rocket motor again to go toward the Moon. They wanted to land at Fra Mauro. Despite the hardships, the crew made it back to Earth. Though the crew did not land on the Moon, the flight became very well known.

Some people regarded it as a failure because they did not land on the Moon. However, others thought it was possibly the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations' (NASA's) greatest accomplishment in returning three men in a very damaged spacecraft back to Earth safely.

Coming up to re-entry, it was thought that the electrical equipment would short circuit because the water in the astronauts' breath had turned back into a liquid all over the computers. However, the electronics were fine.

Books were written about the event, including one by Jim Lovell, the commander of the mission. A movie was also made about it, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks.

Images for kids

Original crew photo.Left to right: Lovell, Mattingly, Haise
Apollo 13 flown silver Robbins medallion
Apollo 13 launches from Kennedy Space Center, April 11, 1970
Apollo 13 spacecraft configuration en route to the Moon
Mission Operations Control Room during Apollo 13's fourth television transmission, on the evening of April 13, 1970. Astronaut Fred Haise, Jr., Lunar Module Pilot, is seen on the screen
A Direct Abort return, depicted in a 1966 planning report. The trajectory shown is at a point much earlier and farther away from the Moon than where the Apollo 13 accident happened.
Astronaut John L. Swigert, at right, with the "mailbox" rig improvised to adapt the Command Module's square carbon dioxide scrubber cartridges to fit the Lunar Module, which took a round cartridge
The "mailbox" at Mission Control during the Apollo 13 mission
Apollo 13's damaged Service Module, as photographed from the Command Module after being jettisoned
The Apollo 13 Lunar Module Aquarius is jettisoned above the Earth after serving as a lifeboat for four days. It reentered Earth's atmosphere over Fiji and burned up during reentry
The crew of Apollo 13 on board the USS Iwo Jima following splashdown
Apollo 13 splashes down in the South Pacific on April 17, 1970
Apollo 13 details of oxygen tank number 2 and the heater and thermostat unit
Telemetered parameters of the oxygen tank rupture incident, with inset image of pressure relief valve
President Richard Nixon speaks before awarding the Apollo 13 astronauts the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Replica of the plaque with Swigert's name that was to replace the one attached to Aquarius that had Mattingly's name
The Apollo 13 Command Module on display at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas
Mission Control celebrates the successful splashdown of Apollo 13
Commander James A. Lovell, Jr. reads a newspaper account of the safe recovery of Apollo 13
The Apollo 13 crew talking with President Nixon on April 17, 1970
A recording of the Apollo 13 S-IVB's impact on the lunar surface as detected by the Apollo 12 Passive Seismic Experiment
Crater left by the S-IVB's impact
LM armrest on display at the Apollo/Saturn V Center in Florida