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Whew, What a Mission!
There has never been a happier moment in the United States space program. Although the Apollo 13 mission must be recorded as a failure, there has never been a more prideful moment.
—Thomas Paine, NASA administrator
After the short welcome home ceremony on the Iwo Jima, the astronauts were whisked away to a medical facility on board the ship. A team of nine doctors examined the men for three hours. Lovell had lost 14 pounds (6.4 kg). Swigert and Haise lost between 5 and 10 pounds (2.3 and 4.5 kg) each. All three men were dehydrated. Haise also had a fever and an infection. Dr. Keith Baird described it as a minor problem. He stated that the men were tired but in good health.
The married astronauts, Lovell and Haise, called their wives. Swigert called his parents. The men ate a hearty meal and slept. The next morning, a helicopter flew the crew from the Iwo Jima to Pago Pago, American Samoa, an American territory in the South Pacific. Thousands of colorfully dressed locals greeted the astronauts at the airport. The crew soaked up the warmth of sun-drenched green hills covered with exotic flowers. They watched a performance of Samoan songs and dances. Then they flew to Honolulu, Hawaii, in an air force jet to meet the president.
Homecoming Celebrations
Nixon flew to Houston the day after the astronauts landed. Under cloudy skies, he stood on a raised wooden platform in front of the Manned Spacecraft Center at NASA. Behind him loomed a towering full-scale model of a lunar module. A band played military songs. Nixon presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team. “The three astronauts did not reach the Moon, but they reached the hearts of millions of people in America and in the world,” Nixon said. “We often speak of scientific miracles, forgetting that these are not miraculous happenings at all, but rather the product of hard work, long hours, and disciplined intelligence. The men and women of the Apollo 13 mission operations team performed such a miracle, transforming potential tragedy into one of the most dramatic rescues of all time.” Sigurd Sjoberg, director of flight operations, accepted the award for the team.
Rear Admiral Donald C. Davis, commanding officer of Task Force 130, the Pacific Recovery Force for manned spacecraft missions, welcomes the Apollo 13 crew members aboard the USS Iwo Jima.
After the ceremony in Houston, Nixon and the astronauts’ families flew on Air Force One to Honolulu, Hawaii. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert met them there. When the astronauts stepped off the silver air force jet from Samoa, their families threw their arms around them. President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon stood smiling nearby.
Thousands cheered as Nixon welcomed the crew home. “Your mission served the cause of international understanding and goodwill,” Nixon said. “Never before in the history of man have more people watched together, prayed together, and rejoiced together at your safe return, than on this occasion.”
President Richard M. Nixon stands with the Apollo 13 crew after presenting them the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the ceremony at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.
Nixon read the citation engraved on the astronauts’ medals. “Adversity brings out the character of a man. Confronted suddenly and unexpectedly with grave peril in the far reaches of space, he demonstrated a calm courage and quiet heroism that stand as an example to men everywhere. His safe return is a triumph of the human spirit—of those special qualities of man himself we rely on when machines fail, and that we rely on also for those things that machines cannot do.” Then Nixon hung the Medal of Freedom around each of the astronauts’ necks.
The Apollo 13 crew spent a day in the sun, relaxing with their families in Hawaii. Then they flew to Houston on Air Force Two, the backup presidential plane. Floodlights lit a brief ceremony at Ellington Air Force Base, where thousands of NASA employees welcomed the crew home. A band played “Age of Aquarius,” and a banner that read “Whew, What a Mission!” fluttered in the breeze.
Lovell spoke first. “There were times when we didn’t really think we would make it back here,” he said. “I must admit that the only reason we are here is because of the people right out here now.”
An emotional Swigert added, “Of all the welcomes home we’ve had, this one means the most because it was these people here that made it possible for me to be here.”
The next morning, the Apollo 13 crew began mission debriefing and helping NASA figure out what went wrong with the spacecraft. NASA set up a press conference, and the astronauts described key milestones in the mission. They answered questions from the media and expressed admiration for the tireless work of mission control. “I’m very much disappointed,” Lovell said, “just as Fred is and Jack, that we couldn’t complete the mission. We certainly wanted to make a lunar landing. ”Then he added, “Perhaps what we got out of this flight was also well worth it.” A reporter asked if Lovell would fly future missions. The astronaut assured him that if NASA assigned him another spaceflight, he’d be willing to go.
Haise added that he had worked for NASA for fifteen years and planned to continue working there for another thirty. “So, I’ll just do whatever job the agency decides is the best place I can be and can contribute the most.”
The Investigation
NASA had not tried to figure out what caused the explosion on Apollo 13 while the astronauts were in space. Mission control had focused all their energy on bringing the crew safely back to Earth.
Now that the astronauts had returned, Thomas Paine, NASA director, formed a commission to investigate what went wrong on the spacecraft. NASA announced that future trips to the moon would wait until the Apollo 13 investigation was complete. The agency would figure out the problem or problems, fix them, and make sure a similar crisis never occurred.
Edgar Cortright, director of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, headed the commission. Its fourteen members included Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, engineers and administrators from NASA, and an independent observer from outside NASA. From pictures of the service module the crew brought back to Earth, the committee knew that a meteor hadn’t hit the spacecraft. The blast came from within the service module. Their job focused on finding out where, how, and why.
The committee examined the manufacturing history of the equipment in the service module. They looked at test results on the oxygen and hydrogen tanks and noted problems that had developed during installation and testing. Before long, they isolated several problems with oxygen tank no. 2. NASA engineers ran laboratory tests to verify their findings.
This photograph from a motion picture sequence taken during a propagation test during the postflight investigation for Apollo 13 shows the failure of the oxygen tank conduit with abrupt loss of oxygen pressure.
After a two-month investigation, the committee concluded that a combination of mistakes caused the explosion in space. Oxygen tank no. 2 had been dropped about 2 inches (5 cm) before the flight. Technicians had examined the tank for damage and tested it to make sure it worked properly. No damage was detected, so they left the tank in place inside the service module.
During prelaunch tests at the Kennedy Space Center, the oxygen in tank no. 2 would not drain. Workers turned on heaters in the tank to boil off the oxygen. But there was a problem. The Apollo 13 spacecraft operated on 28 volts of electricity. The ground equipment at Kennedy Space Center that supplied power to the heaters worked at 65 volts. The company that made the heaters pointed out that the thermostatic switches on the heaters should also be changed to 65 volts, but engineers failed to make the change and nobody caught the mistake. The switches continued to operate at 28 volts on heaters operating at 65 volts.
Apollo 14 launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on January 31, 1971, at 4:03:02 p.m.
When workers drained oxygen tank no. 2, the heaters were kept on for eight hours. Normally, the temperature in the tank did not rise higher than 80°F (27°C). However, because of the voltage discrepancy, the temperature inside tank no. 2 rose to nearly 1,000°F (538°C). The high temperature melted the Teflon coating the wires inside the tank. Nobody could see that inside tank no. 2, the wires were bare and exposed. During the Apollo 13 spaceflight, when Swigert flipped the switch to turn on the heaters and stir the oxygen tank, a spark from the exposed wires started a fire, and tank no. 2 exploded.
Investigators also learned why the Apollo 13 spacecraft kept drifting off course on its trip back to Earth. Wisps of steam released from Aquarius’s cooling system pushed the spacecraft off its trajectory bit by bit. Since a lunar module had never been flown back to Earth, engineers had not encountered the problem before the Apollo 13 mission.
The committee summarized its findings in a report. “The accident is judged to have been nearly catastrophic,” the report stated. “Only outstanding performance on the part of the crew, mission control, and other members of the team which supported the operations successfully returned the crew to Earth.”
The investigation led NASA to make several changes to Apollo spacecraft. They added a third oxygen tank and placed it in a separate area of the service module. They removed thermostat switches. They improved wire coating. They added a battery powerful enough to bring astronauts back to Earth from any point in a lunar mission. They added water storage bags to give astronauts a way to store drinking water in the command module. NASA also modified procedures to ensure Apollo 13 oversights would not happen again.
After NASA finished Apollo’s spacecraft repairs, the agency was ready to continue its exploration of the moon. NASA had plans for Apollo 14 through Apollo 20. Each mission would build on the one before and include more extensive scientific experiments. But the 1970s was a difficult time for America. The Vietnam War intensified. Protests against the war increased. Many people did not support the space program any longer because of the many problems on Earth that needed solving. Congress cut NASA’s budget, so NASA canceled the final three Apollo missions. The news disappointed the nine astronauts scheduled for those flights, especially Fred Haise, commander of the grounded Apollo 19 flight.
Fra Mauro Once More
Apollo 14 blasted off on January 31, 1971, nine months after Apollo 13 landed. The crew—Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell—took over the scientific mission objectives of Apollo 13 with a new and improved service module. Mechanical difficulties in the docking system almost ended the mission shortly after it began. It took six attempts for the crew to dock the command module with the lunar module. After that, the astronauts enjoyed a smooth, glitch-free ride to the moon. Then another problem developed and almost canceled the moon landing.
As Shepard and Mitchell prepared to land in the Fra Mauro region, flight controllers at mission control noticed that the spacecraft computer had received an abort command. If this command appeared when the astronauts were hovering over the lunar surface, it would end the mission. But the signal came on randomly. When Mitchell tapped on the instrument panel, it disappeared. Mission control studied their equipment readings. All systems looked good for a lunar landing. They worked with computer programmers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and came up with a fix. The programmers wrote a software patch to tell the lunar module computer to ignore the abort signal. The crew in space entered the lines of code into their computer. It worked, and the astronauts proceeded with the landing.
They faced one more challenge. As the astronauts descended, landing radar was supposed to bounce off the surface of the moon and tell them their altitude. But the radar didn’t come on. Mission control rules were clear. If the radar wasn’t working when the spacecraft reached 10,000 feet (3,048 m), they had to abort the mission. It was better to cancel than risk crashing into the moon. Haise was communicating with the crew from mission control. Haise told the crew to turn the landing radar switch off and then turn it back on. Shepard flipped the switch. Warning lights disappeared, and radar data appeared on the screen. The astronauts landed on the Fra Mauro highlands.
Command module pilot Roosa orbited the moon and took pictures of the lunar surface. Shepard and Mitchell made two four-hour moonwalks. They collected rock samples and set up experiments. They pulled a two-wheeled cart, a lunar rickshaw, to carry their equipment and samples. Shepard conducted one last experiment before he left the lunar surface. He stuck a golf club head onto a geology tool. Then he dropped a golf ball in the lunar dust and swung away. The ball was hard to hit wearing a bulky space suit. But he connected on his third swing and watched the ball sail away, traveling for close to a mile. Then Shepard and Mitchell returned to the lunar module. They lifted off from the moon, docked with Roosa in the command module, and returned to Earth.
After a spacecraft returned from a lunar landing, NASA sent rock and soil samples from the moon to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Scientists studied and tested the samples. They shipped some of the material to laboratories around the world for analysis. This sharing of scientific knowledge began a new era of international cooperation in space science.
The first three times Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, they were motivated by a race. NASA focused on the technology and science required to get them there and back safely. The distance astronauts could walk from their spacecraft limited their exploration. Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Apollo 14 proved NASA had mastered the technical challenges of the journey.
The final three Apollo missions were not motivated by a race. The race had been won. The promise of scientific exploration motivated them. Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 were voyages of discovery, expeditions to map another world.