The Flight of Apollo 13 Begins
Apollo 13 launched a top a Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at 1413 EDT on 11 April 1970, and darted out over the Atlantic waters. Minutes later, the spent first stage separated and the second stage took over to increase the rocket’s velocity.
As the five engines fired, the center engine abruptly shutdown two minutes early. Controllers decided to burn the remaining four engines 34 seconds longer to stay on its orbital target. The third stage engine also burned for a few seconds longer.
The crew spent the next two days preparing the two docked spacecraft — command module Odyssey and lunar module Aquarius — for lunar orbit. In mission control, the flight was very quiet.
They also beamed to Earth a live 45-minute TV show for the public on day three — 55 hours into the flight. It was never broadcast by the networks.
“Okay Houston, We’ve Had a Problem Here”
Minutes after the broadcast, Swigert was asked by mission control to flip switches to stir the fans in an oxygen tank housed inside the service module. Controllers had seen a failure in one of the tank’s pressure sensor.
About 100 seconds later, the number two oxygen tank ruptured. That explosion on 13 April at 2208 EDT shook the entire spacecraft and caused oxygen tank 1 to also fail over 209,000 miles from Earth.
Swigert radioed seconds later, “Okay Houston, We’ve Had a Problem Here”. The crew then reported of hearing a large bang. Thoughts of a meteor impact had crossed Swigert’s mind.
“Looking over the instrument panel that became very clear that the pressure meter, the temperature, and the quantity meter needles for one of the oxygen tanks was down in the bottom of their gauges,” Fred Haise said in a recent NASA interview. “These are different sensors, so it was unlikely that this was false. So it effectively told me we had lost one oxygen tank.”
The command module was dying, loosing power and water supply. The crew quickly worked to power up the lunar lander Aquarius for the crew to move in to. Aquarius became a life boat upon the vast ocean of space.
“My emotions at that time went to just a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I knew by mission rules, without reference, that that meant the cancellation of the lunar mission,” Haise added. “Within probably the first two minutes, I knew we had lost the mission.”
Oxygen for the crew was never an issue as Aquarius carried a plentiful amount. Carbon dioxide did become an issue inside the lifeboat as the crew of three lived inside a spacecraft designed for two.
Aquarius’ oxygen scrubbers were a different size and shape then those used by Odyssey. The ground worked to have one of Odyssey’s CO2 filters work with Aquarius by using hoses and plastic materials. Jack and Fred constructed what the ground designed, and it worked perfectly.
“The most critical consumable I didn’t consider was the lithium cartridges,” Haise discussed. “The people on the ground subsequently worked out the way of implementing the use of the square cartridge from the command module, which there were an abundance of, to deploy in in the lunar module.”