On April 11, 1970, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Apollo 13 was launched. Named after the Greek god of the sun, Apollo 13’s mission was to land on the moon. However, just like how people believe the number 13 to be unlucky, so was the Apollo mission. The mission lasted for 5 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, and 41 seconds before the module finally landed in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970: 53 years ago.

            Two days into the trip the control center in Houston received a message: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here” from Jack Swigert. The oxygen tank in the service module had failed so the crew aborted the mission and instead of landing on it, circled the moon till they were in position to head back to earth but the four days that they were stuck in the lunar module were horrible and incredibly dangerous.

            Because the life support systems were down, they had to move to lunar module. The ship that was before supposed to bring them to the moon and back. However, it was only built to have two people in it for two days at a time. Instead, mission control in Houston had to improvise new procedures so it could support Fred Haise, Jim Lovell, and Jack Swigert for four days.

            They had stay in the cabin during very great hardships because they had a very chilly, cramped, and damp cabin as well as limited power and most importantly very little drinking water. They also had to reroute the premade route so they could make it back to earth before something even worse happened to them.

            The disasters happening at the time renewed interest in the Apollo missions. Tens of millions of people watched the three finally return safely to earth.

Credit to Adam Dhal for cover photo