Apollo 13 Part 3

Miraculously, they reached the Earth under their limited power and oxygen. This is where the next big and vital step was taken. They needed to renter the command module, which had been powered down during the previous days in order to conserve the remaining power to this exact moment. They need to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere with pinpoint accuracy, otherwise they would land far off course. Another concern of the crew and NASA was whether or not the heat shield was damaged during the explosion. At this point there was really no way to find out, they just needed to keep going.

They reentered the atmosphere perfectly but there was still the three minute communication blackout that NASA had to go through before they would know whether or not the heat shield was damaged. Had it been damaged, then there would have been no chance of survival on reentry. They would have burnt up in the atmosphere much like the Columbia disaster did in 2003 when its heat shield was damaged on takeoff.

This three minute communication blackout almost left NASA crushed. The usual three minute blackout last for almost thirty seconds longer than normal, making mission control think that they had possibly burned up in the atmosphere. Fortunately seconds later, communication was reestablished between the module and mission control, allowing them to breathe a temporary sigh of relief, but the job was still not over. They still needed to be rescued from wherever they would land in the ocean. There were many ships spread out across the South Pacific Ocean. They splashed down near the primary recovery ship the USS Iwo Jima. They were on board and safe in a remarkable forty five minutes. One ship nearby even got video of the module splashing down.

The Apollo 13 mission did not achieve its original mission, and thus was essentially a failure in that respect. From a different perspective, this mission was an astounding success. It demonstrated the incredible innovativeness of NASA engineers and the Apollo 13 crew. In eighth grade, I was lucky enough to travel to Huntsville, Alabama to the US Space and Rocket Center. There I purchased a coin collection of all the Apollo Series missions, including Apollo 13.

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