The mistake was already made. They just didn't know it yet.
And with a single, routine flip of a switch 200,000 miles from Earth, that hidden error was about to detonate a bomb. In an instant, a lunar landing mission became a fight for survival.
As their ship hemorrhaged oxygen into the void, three astronauts shared a single, terrifying thought: they were going to die because of a flaw buried deep within their machine, one that had waited for the most remote point in human history to reveal itself.
Their goal was instantly forgotten, replaced by a desperate, impossible new mission: survive. Using a spacecraft that was never designed to save them, following instructions written on scraps of paper, and trusting a team on Earth to calculate their every move.
This is the story of how three men, on the brink of being lost forever, fought their way home.
During the early 1960s, as the Soviets led the space race by launching a dog and then cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit, U.S. President John F. Kennedy issued a bold challenge: America would land a man on the moon before the decade ended. This vision was realized on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission.
Prior to this, Apollo missions 7 through 10 had reached the moon, though none involved a landing. Apollo 13 was intended to land astronauts in the Fra Mauro region, a geologically complex area believed to have been formed by an asteroid impact.
The spacecraft was composed of three sections: the cone-shaped command module, housing the crew for most of the journey; the spider-like lunar module, designed to carry two astronauts to the moon's surface; and the service module, a large cylinder containing the main engines and oxygen tanks. This service module would remain in orbit, later rejoining the capsule after the moonwalk.
This intricate maneuver required perfect timing, managed by two onboard guidance computers. The three-man crew was led by mission commander James Lovell, a highly experienced astronaut and father of four. He was joined by command module pilot John Swigert, a last-minute replacement, and lunar module pilot Fred Haise, a rookie who left his wife and three children behind.
Despite the mission's ambition, public interest was low when Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970. After all, moonwalks now seemed almost routine. A live broadcast from the spacecraft wasn't even carried by major networks.
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