Apollo 13 - How NASA Saved The Crew Of The Crippled Moon Mission
We’ve all seen the movie and watched Tom Hanks (as Jim Lovell) and his fellow crew members survive the near catastrophic explosion that crippled the Apollo 13 spacecraft, but what was it actually like being in Mission Control on the 11 th 17 th April in 1970? The planned lunar landing was instantly called off and the new challenge was to get the spacecraft safely back to Earth. When the carbon dioxide in the three astronaut’s exhaled breath threatened to asphyxiate them, the crew improvised a filter device, which had been tested in Mission Control, to make the air breathable. Only hours before hurtling back into the atmosphere did they power up the Apollo spacecraft again not knowing if it had been fatally damaged in the explosion. Our event this evening (May 5th) at the Cameo Hotel in…