Jim Lovell died the astronaut who led Apollo 13 on 11 April 1970, the third NASA mission that should have landed on the moon. That’s how it went …
Jim Lovell, the American astronaut who pronounced the famous phrase “Houston, died at 97, we had a problem”. The commander of Apollo 13, the third space mission of NASA who should have made a wing, was coldly managed to manage a serious breakdown of the spaceship on which he traveled together with the two colleagues Fred Haise and Jack Swigert.
A missions started badly. April 11, 1970: From the main launch ramp of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 13 starts, the third NASA mission which should have brought astronauts to the moon. He started badly immediately: after the departure one of the pitcher engines, a Saturn V, a liquid -proposed multistadio rocket, ceased to work two minutes before expected. The shuttle entered the orbit equally thanks to the work of the control center and the crew, who managed to make the other 4 engines work for 34 seconds more than expected.
The breakdown. April 13: two days after departure, when the spacecraft was halfway between the earth and the moon, a liquid oxygen tank exploded, irreparably damaging the Odyssey, as the control module was called (where the crew was housed), and depriving it of electricity.
A failure that hides a success. The astronauts were forced to move immediately to the lunar module, the Aquarius, and then to get to use the engine at best (designed to get off and go back to the moon, not to perform a terra -luna and return journey), to economize on electricity, to manage the insufficiency of the air purification system of the small module – and all this thanks also to the arid from the ground of the astronaut John Young, commander, commander. of the mission reserve crew, which led Jim Lovell (the ODyssey commander, then played by Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13from 1995), Jack Swigert and Fred Haise to solve the problem of air using the materials they had available.
It was an enormous effort of ingenuity, discipline and friendship, and allowed the crew of what remained of the Apollo 13 of Circumnavigare the Moon and return to the ground, on April 17, killing the Pacific Ocean, and to go to history in spite of a mission born and ended badly.
