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Earlier this week, Reuters quoted sources as saying that Starliner’s latest targeted return date is July 6. That would mean the mission, originally planned for eight days, would last a month.
The current state of Boeing’s Starliner is reminiscent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) “successful fail” mission 54 years ago, which shocked everyone.
An explosion in the spacecraft left three astronauts “swinging around the moon” 205,000 miles from Earth. The year was 1970, the mission was Apollo 13 and America’s third attempt to land on the moon near the crater Fra Mauro became a survival challenge for the crew.
‘Houston, we have encountered a problem’ – this sentence that has now become famous was radioed from Apollo 13 to Mission Control after a catastrophic explosion that dramatically changed the mission. Three things were “absolutely essential” to survive – teamwork, good leadership and the initiative to think out of the box.
Meet the Heroes
Before learning about Apollo 13’s incredible journey back to Earth, meet the heroes behind the three-man crew’s safe landing. The three astronauts fighting for their lives in space were Jim Lovell (Hanks), Fred Haise (Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Bacon).
Commander Jim Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise were to land on the moon in the Lunar Module Aquarius on April 15 and explore the Fra Mauro region for 33 hours. Command Module Pilot Swigert was to remain in lunar orbit in the Command Module Odyssey. The crew would have returned to Earth on April 21.
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Will astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who are spending extra time aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule, ever return from space?
Earlier this week, a report cited sources as saying that Starliner’s latest targeted return date is July 6. This would mean the mission, originally planned for eight days, would last a month.
The current state of Boeing’s Starliner is reminiscent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) “successful fail” mission 54 years ago, which shocked everyone.
An explosion in the spacecraft left three astronauts “swinging around the moon” 205,000 miles from Earth. The year was 1970, the mission was Apollo 13 and America’s third attempt to land on the moon near the crater Fra Mauro became a survival challenge for the crew.
‘Houston, we have encountered a problem’ – this sentence that has now become famous was radioed from Apollo 13 to Mission Control after a catastrophic explosion that dramatically changed the mission. Three things were “absolutely essential” to survive – teamwork, good leadership and the initiative to think out of the box.
Meet the Heroes
Before learning about Apollo 13’s incredible journey back to Earth, meet the heroes behind the three-man crew’s safe landing. The three astronauts fighting for their lives in space were Jim Lovell (Hanks), Fred Haise (Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Bacon).
Commander Jim Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise were to land on the moon in the Lunar Module Aquarius on April 15 and explore the Fra Mauro region for 33 hours. Command Module Pilot Swigert was to remain in lunar orbit in the Command Module Odyssey. The crew would have returned to Earth on April 21.
But an explosion in the spacecraft ends their journey four days early and puts their lives at risk. The ground crew at Mission Control, along with astronaut Ken Mattingly (Sinise) and flight director Gene Kranz (Harris), race against time to get the astronauts back home.
‘Plagued by misfortune from the start’
A few days before the launch of the Apollo 13 mission, the crew suffered from German measles. According to NASA, the crew suffered from measles because of backup lunar module pilot Charles Duke.
“Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly did not have any immunity to measles and was replaced by backup Command Module Pilot John “Jack” Swigert,” the US space agency said.
Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell said in an interview that the mission was “plagued by bad omens and bad luck from the start”.
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a loud explosion
NASA reported that just five and a half minutes after the Apollo mission launched into space, John “Jack” Swigert, Fred Haise and James Lovell felt a “slight vibration.”
Two days into the trip, the crew made a live TV broadcast from space, shortly after which Mission Control asked Swigert to “flip a switch for routine stirring of the spacecraft’s oxygen tanks.”
Nine minutes later, the spacecraft exploded, causing first Swigert and then Lovell to report to Earth – “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” The explosion sounded like “you squeeze a Coke can”.
“We heard a loud bang, with a bit of an echo because the vehicles we were in are metal vehicles. It was kind of like… you’re in a big barrel and you hit it with a hammer. In the tunnel area, some of the metal was actually compressing – like you squeeze a Coke can,” one of the astronauts said.
What caused the explosion? ‘It was a bomb that was about to explode’
The explosion was caused by the rupture of an oxygen tank, which caused the second oxygen tank to fail as well. The oxygen tank that exploded appeared to be completely empty, and there were indications that the oxygen in the other tank was running out rapidly. The explosion blew up an entire section of the spacecraft.
It was later discovered that the explosion occurred on a tank that was already damaged. The crew was unaware that the spacecraft was already damaged before it took off from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970.
Jim Lovell explains what really happened.
“Several years before the flight, when the spacecraft was being built, a damaged liquid oxygen tank was installed on the spacecraft. The tank had been dropped on the factory floor. A small piece of plumbing prevented the normal process of removing oxygen following a routine test before flight,” he said.
“And then, the day before the flight, we refilled the tank with liquid oxygen, and it was a bomb ready to go off,” Lovell said.
That bomb exploded 200,000 miles from Earth on April 13, 1970.
3 people lost in space: no sleep, no water and no light
The electrical system in the command module was giving out. “The command module’s normal supply of power, lights and water had gone out, and they were nearly 200,000 miles from Earth,” NASA said.
The journey was also fraught with discomfort, apart from a lack of food and water. “Sleeping was almost impossible because of the cold” as the temperature dropped to 3 degrees Celsius. In addition, carbon dioxide became a problem with every breath.
The warning lights also indicated the destruction of two of the three fuel cells, which were the spacecraft’s main source of power. The fuel cells needed a supply of oxygen to run.
“Procedures are now underway to shut down the command module, which has less than 15 minutes of power left,” an astronaut was heard radioing.
Escape Plan: The Crucial 15 Minutes
The lunar module, which was to land on the surface of the moon, became the crew’s lifeboat. The three astronauts remained in the lunar module for most of the return flight.
Lovell said the first goal at the time was to move the “guidance system” from the command module to the lunar module (which was now carrying the crew back to Earth).
“We only have 15 minutes to do this,” Lovell said. “We were in the lunar module before Rounds realized it.” He added.
As they headed towards the moon, the next step was to calculate the return home. For this, five trajectories or paths were created to help the crew return to Earth.
Gene Kranz, Apollo 13’s lead flight director, said that by that time it was clear that the spacecraft would not land on the Moon, but would orbit the Moon.
To deal with the rising carbon dioxide levels, Mission Control devised a way to use plastic bags of cardboard and tape by placing the canisters in the command module into the lunar module.
The crew turned off most of the systems to save power. This generated a lot of heat, making it impossible to sleep in the cold weather. Water condensed inside the spacecraft.
How to get the crew home?
The team was now left with a “dead service module” [damaged during explosion]a command module that had no power and a lunar module that was a wonderful vehicle” but did not have a heat shield. This was the reason the team decided to leave the lander module on upon entry to Earth.
Before the explosion, Apollo 13’s lander module (carrying the crew) was on a trajectory that would enable it to land on the Moon, putting it “out of a free return path to Earth”.
This meant that the crew was no longer on a trajectory that would allow them to “circle around the Moon” and return to a landing site on Earth.
So, the task now was to get it back on the free-return path.
Three hours after blastoff, the crew used the lunar module’s descent engine to change their course into a “free-return path” around the Moon – which meant the Moon’s gravity would propel them back toward Earth.
It carried Apollo 13 around the Moon, using its gravity to guide the spacecraft back to Earth.
good to be back!
Soon, a rough correction pointed the crew toward a safe return to Earth.
Four hours before landing, the crew jettisoned the service module. Mission Control had insisted on keeping it in place until then because everyone feared what damage the cold of space might do to the unsheltered command module heat shield.
The crew finally saw the damage the explosion had caused – to the service module. They prepared for re-entry and ejected the lunar module.
Shaky shot of the service module: Watch
Three hours later, the crew abandoned the lunar module Aquarius and then landed softly in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa.
On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 reentered the Earth’s atmosphere and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean. The Apollo 13 spacecraft hovered in space for exactly “five days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds.”
Coming back to Earth wasn’t that easy
Originally designed to accommodate two astronauts for two days on the lunar surface, the lander module was supposed to sustain three people for about four days.
“Water lines froze. The crew ate little and slept even less… Power consumption was carefully controlled,” the Planetary Society reported.
In addition, the team “really threw away the book”. An official at the time said, “We never shut down the command module in space and never reactivated it.
Upon return, Lovell, Swigert and Hays had lost 14, 11 and 6.5 pounds, respectively, over the six-day mission.
Nevertheless, the Apollo 13 mission was classified as a “successful failure” because of the experience gained in saving the crew. “The mission’s spent upper stage successfully impacted the Moon,” NASA said.
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Published: June 27, 2024, 10:33 PM IST
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