Haise’s first view of Fra Mauro should have been a moment of excitement: under normal circumstances, it would have been a glimpse of things to come. The area was of particular interest to geologists, because it was anticipated that much of the material on the surface had been excavated and ejected from the nearby Cone Crater. Unlike the sites chosen for the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landings, which had both been on the flat basaltic plains of the moon’s maria, or “seas,” the Fra Mauro highlands were characterized by low ridges and large hills, offering brand-new varieties of lunar terrain to explore. “Looking down at the moon, we could view Fra Mauro, our site where we planned to land.” Tsiolkovsky Crater, photographed by the Apollo 13 astronauts as they looped around the far side of the moon in April 1970. We shot them mostly out of interest as a tourist,” Haise says. Jack and I both pulled out our cameras and shot a lot of pictures. But with the crew members’ survival weighing heavily on everyone’s mind, the mission’s science objectives were not a priority. As command module pilot, Swigert had trained to photograph the natural satellite from high above, including using a new large-format topographic camera that had not been flown before. Lovell had been to the moon before-he was among the first three people to enter its orbit on the Apollo 8 mission two years earlier-but this journey was the first time Haise and Swigert saw the cratered surface up close. Looping around the far side, the moon’s gravity would provide the acceleration needed to get the astronauts back to Earth. Using something that was still operating on the spacecraft-namely, the rocket engine that would have landed Lovell and Haise on the moon- Apollo 13 was put on a “free-return” trajectory. It was a matter of working through it with a number of the challenges and that someone on the ground, working at mission control, would find the answers.” “I had no idea about the percentage-what odds there were. “Before you go on one of these missions, you assume, necessarily, you’re not going to get back,” says Haise, Apollo 13’s lunar module pilot. Group of flight controllers gather to discuss the challenge of bringing the crew of the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft safely home. Quickly assessing the situation and following the guidance of a team of engineers on the ground, the crew went to work on shutting down the command module and powering up the lunar lander to serve as a lifeboat. But the oxygen needed for the fuel cell was being spewed out the backend of our spacecraft.” “We still had one good fuel cell, and it was providing enough electrical power to get us back to Earth.
“We said, ‘Oh, my God, the moon landing is off,’” recalls Lovell, Apollo 13’s commander. In an instant, the April 1970 mission’s priority switched from extending knowledge about Earth’s natural satellite to safely returning the crew home.
Instead, 50 years ago this month, Apollo 13 “had a problem.”Īn oxygen tank that had been unknowingly damaged before it left the ground exploded en route to the moon, crippling the spacecraft with astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert onboard. Had everything gone to plan, NASA’s third mission to land astronauts on the moon would have deployed a pallet of science instruments and brought back samples from humanity’s first visit to the lunar uplands.
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