Mission to the moonThe Apollo 13 was one of many space missions in the NASA program. It was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. This mission very unique compared to others because of one little caused catastrophic series of events. This missiontested everyone's ability to brainstorm solutions for the problems.
The thing that caused the abortion of the mission was when mission control informed the craft to check or stir the liquid oxygen tanks. When Swigert turned on the fans inside the tanks, there was a warning light indicating that something went wrong. Apparently when the fan inside the tank was turned on, there was faulty wiring and caused a spark inside the second liquid oxygen tank. This spark caused an explosion inside of the service module, which destroyed it and anything inside of it. With this problem, a series of events began to fall into place. |
the spacecraft |
The Apollo spacecraft was made up of two independent spacecraft joined by a tunnel: orbiter Odyssey, and lander Aquarius. The crew lived in Odyssey on the journey to the moon.The craft had three sections that separate, the spider looking object was the lunar module, the small triangle shape in the middle was where the crew spent most of their time, the command module, and finally the biggest part was where the crew's supply of energy and oxygen was located. Since oxygen fed Odyssey's fuel cells, power was reduced as well. The spacecraft's attitude control thrusters, sensing the venting oxygen, tried to stabilize the spacecraft through firing small jets. The system wasn't successful given several of the jets were shut down by the explosion. Luckily for Apollo 13, the damaged Odyssey had a backup, the Aquarius, which wasn't supposed to be turned on until the crew was close to landing on the moon. It did not have a heat shield to survive the trip back into Earth's atmosphere, but it could keep the crew alive long enough to get there. Then, the astronauts could change into Odyssey when they arrived to their destination.
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problems within the aquarius
Once on board of the Aquarius, the crew had to manage preserving the power to get home. James decided to power down everything inside of the lunar module because everything there takes up power. Since there was no source of heat, the temperature inside of the cabin dropped nearly below freezing. With this problem the water and food began to become inedible, caused the entire to lose weight. Due to the lack of water, Haise developed a kidney infection. The crew could not spare any more water due to the fact that they needed to keep the entire system cooled down.