Unlucky Apollo 13

April 17, 1970 - The crew of Apollo 13 has their first and only opportunity to directly survey the explosive damage to the Service Module before re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Without the Lunar Module drafted into service as a tenuous lifeboat following the oxygen tank explosion the crew would have perished. The damage sustained "It’s worth noting," writes Amy Shira Teitel, "NASA has never since launched, nor does it plan to launch, another mission designated ’13.’ AS13-59-8500 [NASA/JSC].

Amy Shira Teitel
Vintage Space

When Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970, the world wasn’t all that excited. Going to the Moon had become routine; the Vietnam war and Paul McCartney leaving the Beatles were bigger stories in America. The one aspect of the mission that did have people talking was its numeric designation: 13. Man’s greatest scientific endeavor was about to go head to head with one of its most enduring superstitions. 

Read my full article on Discovery News, HERE.

Chronicles of Grumman's Lunar Module

Ross Bracco, part of the Grumman ascent-stage team, at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, NY, in front of a display that shows Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the lunar surface [EDN].

Steve Taranovich
senior technical editor, EDN

President John F. Kennedy's vision was put into motion, stretching America toward the goal of landing man on the moon during the 1960s. A group of daring, talented men was specially chosen for the success of this heroic, pioneering effort. They were not astronauts but a team of young Grumman engineers about to embark upon an historic journey filled with technical design challenges in an extremely hostile environment. Their goal: to protect the lives of the many crews of astronauts that would be ferried to the moon and back.

Roserio (Ross) Bracco was selected as one of the initial group of 25 engineers who would begin development of the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) in November 1962 at Grumman's Bethpage, NY, facility. The contract was completed in 1966 with 21 LEMs built-14 for flight and seven designated as LTA (LEM test article) -1 through -7.

Bracco is a graduate of Cooper Union in New York and was one of the first students there to receive a master's degree in mechanical engineering. When I visited him recently at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, NY, where he volunteers, he shared some incredibly interesting memories of his design journey in pursuit of a dream to have the first man safely set foot on the moon. Most of the pictures in this article were taken at the museum; it has an extraordinary display of LEM history, including actual, full-size LEM test articles. One is located in a huge room simulating the lunar surface and sky, complete with stars and the earth as it looked to Neil Armstrong when he stepped onto the moon's surface. The museum also has an exhibit that chronicles the entire history of flight, including some amazing restorations and models of aircraft. It's definitely worth a visit!

Read the full article HERE.

Recommendation: UniverseToday

The view out the window of their impromptu lifeboat Aquarius, the Apollo 13 Lunar Module, less than a day after the Service Module LOX tank explosion that nearly doomed the crew. The time was around sunset, April 15, 1970, back home in Houston, ~398,600 kilometers below. Apollo 13 has just emerged from the Far Side terminator, and the view out from Aquarius, looking past the frosty, crippled Command Module Odyssey is of the long evening shadows of the lunar southern hemisphere, perhaps 15 minutes before reacquisition of signal. During the radio blackout, Apollo became the only manned spacecraft to take full advantage of a free-return trajectory. Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Contributor Danny Caes writes, "The two major craters in this photograph are Chaplygin (just left of center), and Schliemann (below center)." - AS13-62-8885 [ASJ/NASA/JSC]

13 Things that saved Apollo 13

Nancy Atkinson
UniverseToday

"To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, for 13 days, Universe Today will feature "13 Things That Saved Apollo 13," discussing different turning points of the mission with NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill."

The longest day for the crew of Apollo 13, for Jim Lovell (on what became his second trip to the lunar vicinity), Rusty Swigert and Fred Haise, had to be when their spaceship combination was traveling it's slowest. That would have been between the explosion, which occurred while they were essentially orbiting the Sun, and their flyover of the Moon's Far Side. During the long uphill climb, still expending velocity from their Earth orbit ejection, Apollo 13 was barely moving a kilometer per second, waiting for the Moon to intercept them.

For a long time, they could watch the Moon approach them in it's orbit. It was also the most anxious time, as the crew and ground controllers "worked the numbers," and they were not promising. Most of the work removing the unplanned and novel uncertainty from their flight plan lay ahead of them.

Fortunately, a lot of what is called "institutional memory," a lot of "head room" was flying with them, at the end of a long radio signal. Nancy Atkinson has been doing such an excellent job cataloging this transformation of near tragedy to triumph, we simply recommend you follow her as she racks it all up for you over at Universe Today.

What a sweet sight those parachutes were!

That's what we've been doing, and we might just watch Ron Howard's excellent film "Apollo 13," once again.

The part of Apollo 13 that made it to the Moon

At least part of the Apollo 13 Saturn stack made it to the Moon, around the time Jim Lovell (on his second trip to the lunar vicinity) Rusty Swigert and Fred Haise were swinging around the Moon, preparing to use the Lunar Module descent stage to accelerate into an Earthbound re-entry window, the 3rd Stage that had propelled them out of Earth orbit slammed into the Moon. The guided impact successfully tested the seismometer left by Conrad & Bean the previous November. The SIVB came in at a steep angle (73 degrees), spreading a field of debris kilometers away, as seen in the smaller scale inset from LROC Narrow-Angle Camera image M109420042LE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Forty years after Apollo 13

Jim Lovell leads Rusty Swigert and Fred Haise, on their way toward the launch of Apollo 13, April 11, 1970 [AP].

Dewayne Bevil
Orlando Sentinel

Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex is holding events in April in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, which was coined "a successful failure" back in the day and turned into a motion picture in 1995.

On April 10, the complex will have a special "Astronaut Encounter," featuring Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, the surviving crew of Apollo 13 (Lunar Module Pilot and Apollo 9 astronaut Jack Swigert died in 1982). The astronauts will tell spaceflight stories, including their experiences aboard Apollo 13, which included an explosion en route to the moon, four days in space using the lunar module as a lifeboat and a journey around the far side of the moon on their gut-wrenching trip back to Earth. The appearance starts at 10:30 a.m.

On April 9, Charlie Duke, who was backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 13, will be signing copies of his book Moonwalker at the complex. Two years later, Duke flew to the moon on Apollo 16 and became the 10th man to walk on the moon. Books will be available for purchase at the complex's Space Shop, and the book-signing will begin at 3:30.

Both experience are included in regular admission to the attraction, which is $38 general, $28 ages 3-11. for more information, call 321-449-4444 or go to www.KennedySpaceCenter.com.

Lovell recalls ill-fated Apollo 13

Cynthia Dizikes
Chicago BreakingNews Center

"We were going to a place called Fra Mauro and it was about in the center of the moon," Lovell told the rapt teenagers. "It was going to be different than the first two landings because they landed in the (flat areas) ... but now they wanted us to land in the hills and the highlands."

Instead, NASA's third planned moon landing turned into a life-or-death struggle to return to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded and the crew lost its oxygen supply and electrical power.

"We were in sort of deep trouble," Lovell told the students, whom he encouraged Wednesday to pursue science even if it meant reaching beyond their high school classes.

As a young boy growing up in Milwaukee, Lovell said he consumed all the information he could about astronomy, physics and engineering. His wife, Marilyn, who said she met him in high school, remembered sitting with his mother on their porch watching him try to set off homemade rockets in a nearby lot.

"We would both say, 'He's crazy, this is insane,'" said Marilyn Lovell, laughing. "But, he just kept at it."

Read the full article, HERE.

Captain Lovell at Alder Planetarium

Frank Mathie
WLS-TV - Chicago

Captain Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, spoke at Adler Planetarium about the mission, which went from near disaster to unbelievable rescue.

Lovell kicked off the planetarium's month long "Shoot for the Moon" celebration. He told the story to students from the city's Air Force Academy High School.

"About 200,000 miles out as you might expect we had that explosion. And right away we didn't know what the situation was but as it turned out we had an oxygen tank that blew up," said Capt. Lovell.

The explosion lead to what many call NASA's greatest hour. The spacecraft had lost two of its three oxygen tanks and electrical power but somehow mission control had the astronauts jerry rig their command and lunar modules for a heart stopping ride home. Four days later they landed safely and the world sighed in relief.

Story & video, HERE.

Apollo 13 Saturn IVB impact crater

Bang! On April 14, 1970 the Apollo 13 Saturn IVB (Saturn V Third Stage) impacted the Moon north of Mare Cognitum (-2.55°S, 332.12°E). The impact crater, roughly 30 meters in diameter, is clearly visible in LROC NAC image M109420042LE. Study of the rare impacts that can be definitively dated helps in determining rates of space weathering on every scale. The Apollo 13 SIVB impact shows a relatively wide ranging ray system, part of which may have resulted from hot plasma pressure waves. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

The Apollo 14 S-IVB (S-IVB-509) was 17.8 m tall, 6.6 m in diameter and weighing ~14,000 kg. Launched carrying Apollo 14 on January 31, 1971, after extraction of Lunar Module its remaining fuel was dumped and it was directed to impact the Moon on February 4. [NASA].

Saturn V Third Stage impacts recorded by the Apollo seismic network

Juergen Oberst
LROC News System

In April, the Apollo 13 Saturn V blasted off towards the Moon. The Saturn rocket consisted of a 3-stage launching system. While the first and second stage of the launch vehicle dropped back to Earth after launch, the third stage (S-IVB) was used to propel the docked Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module from Earth orbit into a lunar trajectory. The spent rocket booster then separated from the Command Module and later impacted the Moon. From the tracking of the radio signals of the rocket, the impact locations on the Moon and the impact times were fairly well known.

Seismogram of the Apollo 13 S-IVB impact recorded at the Apollo 12 seismic station in digital units (DU). The three traces designate the signal of the 3 orthogonal components of the ground motion at long wavelengths. The arrows mark the arrival times of the p (primary) and the slower s (secondary) seismic waves (image modified from: Ewing, M., et al., (1971), Seismology of the Moon and implications on internal structure, origin and evolution, in: De Jaeger (Eds.): Highlights of Astronomy, IAU, pp.155-172).

The impacts by the S-IVB stages represented unique calibration signals for the Apollo seismic station network, which operated on the lunar surface from 1969 - 1977. Since the rocket impacts occurred at known times and places, the seismic wave velocities, in particular those within the upper lunar crust could be measured directly.

At the time of the Apollo 13 mission, only the seismometer at Apollo 12 was available, which had been deployed 5 months earlier. The S-IVB impact occurred at a distance of 135 km from that seismic station.

AS12-46-5817 Until defunded in 1977, the Apollo 12 seismometer monitored levels of ground motion to detect arriving seismic waves. The instrument is protected by metal foil against the varying temperatures on the lunar surface that produce large thermal stresses. The Solar Wind Spectrometer is to the right of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment (ALSEP) Central Station, the Passive Seismic Experiment is to the left and the Lunar Surface Magnetometer is in the background, beyond and just to the left of the Central Station (NASA/Conrad/Apollo 12).

Analysis by the LROC team now have identified the craters associated with most of the rocket impacts in their predicted areas. Taking advantage of the precise LRO orbit and LROC pointing knowledge, it is now possible to determine the impact coordinates of rockets and their distances from the seismic stations more accurately to within a few hundred meters, over time as the orbit calculations are improved these estimates will in turn become more accurate. The precise impact coordinates may warrant a reanalysis of the seismic calibration data for improved models of seismic wave propagation within the Moon and the Lunar interior structure. The seismograph network recorded more than 13,000 seismic events and delivered some of the most important scientific results of the Apollo missions.

Find the Apollo 13 S-IVB impact crater in the full NAC image. Review an earlier LROC image posting of the Apollo 14 S-IVB impact crater.

Forty years after Apollo 13 at KSC

Having barely survived the aftermath of the tank explosion resulting in the only aborted manned lunar landing, after swinging around the Moon and using their lunar module's descent rocket to accelerate their lifeboat configuration into a proper return trajectory, before encountering Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 kilometers per hour, the crew first undocked from the LM and then jettisoned the Service Module. Only then were they able to see how close their ordeal came to ending at the very start. The explosion had ripped away entire panels on the SM and warped the fragile superstructure. As they re-entered Earth's atmosphere it still remained to be seen whether the Command Module's heat-shield had been damaged. Though the scene above was described by the exhausted crew to anxious Houston, nearly a week passed after the crew of Apollo 13 was safe on the ground before the above picture was available to the world [NASA/Apollo 13].

Jason Rhian

Examiner

It was called NASA’s “successful failure” and it marked one of the most trying points in the space agency’s history. Apollo 13 tested the resolve of NASA’s young engineers and astronauts as never before the heroic efforts of these space pioneers would go down to write NASA’s finest hour. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the near-loss of the Apollo 13 crew, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation is celebrating the safe return of the crew at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Apollo 13 saga began with the liftoff of the mighty Saturn V rocket at 13:13 p.m. (EDT) on April 11, 1970. Two days after launch, a command was given to stir the oxygen tanks and what followed was one of the most dramatic moments in manned spaceflight history. An explosion occurred and the crew and mission managers on the ground had to scramble to ensure the safe return of the crew. Through seat-of-the-pants flying and ingenious technical innovations, the crew was brought home safe and sound. To show how great an impact this mission had, to date it is the only Apollo mission to have a big-budget Hollywood movie made about it.

Not even Apollo 11 can make that claim.

Read the article HERE.

Fred Haise: Ambassador of Exploration

Apollo 13 lunar module pilot Fred Haise, Jr, 76, was originally slated to become the sixth man to walk on the Moon in April 1970. Instead he considers himself fortunate to have survived that ill-fated mission, earning the distinction of having circled behind the Moon and immediately returned to Earth.

The Associated Press via the Fort Mill Times, reports from his hometown of Biloxi that Haise "will receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award during a ceremony Dec. 2 at the Gorenflo Elementary School."

"Haise will then present the award, consisting of a moon rock encased in Lucite for display, to the elementary school, which he attended."

Apollo vets call for spaceflight funding

Tim Talley - AP Texas Houston Chronicle

OKLAHOMA CITY — Former astronauts and NASA administrators said Wednesday the space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope is a good example of why the nation needs a viable, well-funded space program.

"The Hubble Space Telescope wouldn't be in the shape it's in if it wasn't for them," George Abbey, a former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said of the mission by the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis to make the 19-year-old observatory more powerful than ever.

"It's a great example of why you have men in space and the value of men in space," Abbey said.

Abbey and other former NASA officials discussed funding issues and the uncertain direction of the U.S. space program during a ceremony at the Oklahoma History Center to observe the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 10 mission, for which Oklahoma native Thomas Stafford served as commander.

Stafford, who also flew on two earlier Gemini missions and commanded a second Apollo mission in 1975, said the future of the space program will depend largely on what kind of support it receives from the Obama administration.

Former astronaut Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot on the aborted Apollo 13 mission, said funding is vital if the space program is to repeat the successes of the 1960s that ended with a series of manned missions to the moon.

"You're not going very far if you don't have enough," Haise said.

Former astronaut Walter Cunningham, the lunar module pilot on Apollo 7, said administrators and budget writers should stop citing risk factors in space flight when deciding which NASA programs to fund and how much they receive.

"Space is never going to be cheap. And it's never going to be safe," Cunningham said. "Sometimes that's the price you pay for progress."

Read the article HERE.

EETimes Power Engineer - video interview with Ken Mattingly

You do not want to miss the multi-media opportunity presented by EETimes, put together by George Leopold, featuring modest giant of Apollo fame Admiral Ken Mattingly.

You may know him as the man played by Gary Sinese in Ron Howard's film Apollo 13 who "worked the problem" on the ground, tediously and repeatedly, to get Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise back to Earth, searching for the last fraction of voltage from the crippled spacecraft to save the crew or the command module, but not both.

In the end, of course, he found the sequence that did save both, in April 1970, when trips to the Moon somehow became "routine." (Except for certain 13-year-old entusiasts who cried bloody murder when prime time was not interrupted for that last, casual trans-lunar coast television opportunity, minutes before all hell broke loose.)

In the course of explaining how he helped save the crew of Apollo 13, Ken Mattingly mentions, as an aside, that "in the process of going through all this [power-up procedures for the command module], somebody noticed that we could take any residual power we had in the [lunar module] batteries and run it backwards" to the Apollo command module. This was accomplished using a small-capacity power cable designed to provide power to the lunar module from the command module.

"We actually believe we topped off the [command module] batteries," Mattingly noted with understandable pride during an extended interview at his office here in mid-January

That "somebody" might have been Mattingly, and the estimated 4 amps of additional power provided by this kluge, along with a detailed power-up procedure developed by one of NASA's "steely-eyed missile men," John Aaron, allowed the Apollo 13 astronauts to restart a frozen command module that was their only means of getting home.

The off-handed manner in which Rear Adm. Thomas K. Mattingly, 73, presented this nugget of information is typical of his understated style, his modesty and his consummate ability as an engineer. These, along with the astronauts' dead-certain belief in their ability to overcome any technical hurdle, were precisely the traits that defined the Apollo program.

Referring to the painstaking development of the sequencing procedure needed to power up the hibernating Apollo 13 command module, Mattingly said, "You don't get technical answers by playing around."

The Apollo astronaut and Space Shuttle commander will be a keynote speaker on March 31 at the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2009 (March 30-April 2) in San Jose, Calif.

Mattingly never got to walk on the Moon, and he acknowledged that every Apollo astronaut burned to do just that. "Everybody wants to go to the Moon. That means, go land on the Moon," Mattingly said. Hence, being a command module pilot was a bit like being a "bridesmaid."

Read the story HERE.

Direct Link to Video, Courtesy EETimes

Into Space: Fred Haise lecture series in Alabama

Fred Haise, Lunar Module pilot on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, opens a lecture series tonight. - Mary Perez - Herald-Sun.com

Fred Haise didn’t set out to be a pilot or go to space.

His first job was delivering The Daily Herald, the predecessor to the Sun Herald, on his bicycle and then on a motor scooter.

He later became a cub reporter and when he graduated from Biloxi High School at 16, he went to what is now the Perkinston campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to become a journalist.

Rather than risk being drafted during the Korean War, he enlisted to continue his studies and became a pilot instead of a reporter — a career move that changed the course of his life and thrust him into the national spotlight.

At 36, when he was supposed to be the sixth man to walk on the moon, the world watched as he and his fellow Apollo 13 astronauts, James Lovell and John Swigert, using ingenuity and slide rules, figured how to get their ailing spacecraft safely home. Their story was made into a popular movie, “Apollo 13,” starring Bill Paxton as Haise. “I didn’t look at myself as a public figure,” said Haise, who was awarded the Presidential Medal for Freedom in 1970 and was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor.

He will talk about some of his experiences tonight during this year’s first program in the Issues + Answers Lecture Series, sponsored by USM Gulf Coast College of Science and Technology and the Sun Herald. Admission is free.

A month after his Apollo 13 mission in May 1970, Haise was welcomed home to Biloxi with one of the biggest parades in the city’s history and a ceremony to rename Church Street where he lived to Haise Street.

Three years later, he had a second brush with fate while flying a World War II airplane used in the movie “Tora, Tora, Tora.” The engine quit and on landing the plane flipped. Haise was burned over 70 percent of his body. He wouldn’t let doctors put in any metal pins or plates so he could continue to fly.

He did fly again, becoming the first to fly the space shuttle Enterprise off the back of a Boeing 747 airplane and land it safely.

“I didn’t just fly the Enterprise,” he said, but was involved in the design and development of the space shuttle.

After retiring from NASA, he was vice president of space programs at Grumman Aerospace Corporation.

“Some people look at it as I had trouble holding a job,” he joked about his career.

Haise said that it didn’t seem that incredible that a Biloxi boy was on his way to the moon. “It was just another step in that trail in my aviation experience,” he said.

Today, Haise lives in Houston with his wife, Patt, and has a second home in Gautier. He is a board member of the Infinity Science Center and a fundraising campaign — $2 Our Hero — was named in his honor to raise the $4 million that is still needed to build the center in Hancock County.

While he’s on the Coast, Haise will attend three fundraising events for Infinity and one in Hattiesburg for the Boy Scouts’ Pine Burr Council.

“As a boy, I was in the Pine Burr Council Troop 212, Dan Beard Patrol in Biloxi,” said Haise. “My scoutmaster was E.P. Wilkes, the original founder of the Biloxi/Gulfport Daily Herald.”

He never forgot where he came from and Haise anticipates he will see many people he knows in the crowd tonight.

The university invites speakers who have a unique look at different subjects, said USM spokesperson Charmaine Williams Schermund. Haise will share his vision for the nation’s space program and the impact the industry has had on the quality of American life.

'Apollo 13' History becomes legend

Vanja Deželić Javno

This Day in History:

Only 9 months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the Moon`s surface, giving the United States of America their first space triumph over Russia, it was decided that Apollo 13 expedition is to head for the Moon.

The crew members were: Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert and they were launched for the Fra Mauro Lunar crater on April 11 from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

Their space flight became most famous for the tragedy which followed. The problems began at 320,000 km away from Earth, as Apollo 13 started coming closer to the Moon`s trajectory.

Houston, we`ve had a problem!

Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here! – Swigert said as an oxygen tank exploded and gas started leaking out. His sentence remained history and is used today when we want to tell someone about an event that has happened or is happening.

Read more HERE.

Fred Haise keynotes Mississippi Economic Council Meeting

Fred Haise

Jackson Clarion-Ledger Biloxi native and Apollo 13 LM pilot Fred Haise will keynote the annual Mississippi Economic Council meeting, May 7 at the Jackson Marriott.

"Failure is Not an Option," will be the topic of Haise's speech. More than 1,000 people are expected to attend.

Haise, who was one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966, gained fame as crew member on the infamous Apollo 13 mission in 1970. Haise was backup to Jim Lovell, later his commander on Apollo 13, as LM pilot for Apollo 8 in 1968 and for Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 in 1969. After Apollo 13 returned safely in April 1970, he served as backup for John Young as commander of Apollo 16 in 1972.