Despite the mission being a failure, the Apollo 13 flight was one of the greatest successes of American space exploration. The mission was originally schedule to include a moon landing but a sudden explosion drastically changed the focus of the mission.
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned space mission in the Apollo missions. It was the third scheduled to conduct a moon landing. The mission was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. "Jack" Swigert as Command Module pilot and Fred W. Haiseas Lunar Module pilot. They had undergone 24 months of intensive training in order to prepare for this mission. The mission objective was to explore the Fra Mauro region of the moon. This region was home to the 80-kilometer Fra Mauro crater.
The frightening mission began on April 11, 1970. From the start it was a picture perfect start to the mission. Everything seemed to be going as planned. The astronauts filled their time will experiments, photography, radio, and Television broadcasts. After two days of a picture perfect mission, 15 seconds after a fan was turned on to mix up the hydrogen and oxygen tanks to ensure equal pressure, the crew experienced a fierce jolt and heard an explosion from the side of the command module.
After a quick assessment of the damage, the gauges read that one oxygen tank had been completely lost. They then noticed that they were spewing something out of another tank into space. They realized that they were steadily losing pressure in the other oxygen tank. They had also damaged two other fuel cells, resulting in an unbelievable and inconceivable loss of four major systems.
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