Two days after the launch of the Apollo 13 mission, which was supposed to land on the moon, a disaster befell the spacecraft carrying a number of astronauts. And a new documentary film reviews the details of that trip, in which astronaut Jim Lovell tells of the incredible efforts that were made to return the crew of that mission to Earth.
On the second day of the launch of the Apollo 13 mission, on April 14, 1970, the members of the mission, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, had covered a long distance on their way to the moon. Earlier that day, Joe Kerwin, mission liaison at the Space Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, said the spacecraft was "in good shape and intact." "Boredom is killing us here at the center," he joked.
In fact, NASA's third moon landing did not succeed in capturing the public's attention. "People were tired of talking about the moon landings, and the papers only mentioned Apollo 13 in the weather pages," Lovell, who is nearing 90 now but looks 20 years younger, told BBC Future.
In their message, which was broadcast live on television 55 hours and 46 minutes after the mission's launch, the crew took viewers inside the command module and the lunar lander, but this broadcast was not shown on any of the main television channels.
"There was no media representative in the control center," says C. Liebergott, who sat behind the control panel at the NASA control center managing the spacecraft's electrical, environmental and communications systems. "The media thought the public wasn't interested in going to the moon and landing on the moon." its surface.”
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Libergott was one of many young men assigned to the control center, most of whom were in their twenties at the time of the moon landings. The new documentary, "Space Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo," highlights Liebergott's role in safety monitoring of the life-sustaining systems of the Apollo spacecraft.
Chris Kraft, first chief of NASA's Spaceflight Controllers team, laid out the concept of supervising manned spaceflight from a single room on Earth with a clear set of commands, drawing on his insights into aircraft testing.
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Kraft likened the control of space missions to an orchestra, and like the conductor of an orchestra, the head of the spaceflight control team coordinates its independent parts.
All commands are considered by the head of the spaceflight control team before the capsule liaison officer sends them to the astronauts. Usually, the liaison officer is an astronaut.
"Here on Earth we are much more familiar with the spacecraft and its operations than the spacecraft crew," says Liebergott. "The phrase 'try it out' is always on our tongues. It's an exercise in self-control and commitment, not just execution."
Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, clarity and avoid ambiguity in the decision-making process. In fact, everyone was keen to take all possible steps so that unexpected events did not occur.
In the evening, before the Apollo 13 crew had time to rest, Jacques Luzma, communications officer, told them: "13, we have just one mission left for you to do whenever you have the chance, we want you to turn on the fans of the cold oxygen tanks."
These tanks, located in the spacecraft's service module, were Liebergott's responsibility, carrying oxygen and hydrogen, which are converted into electricity and water through a chemical reaction in three fuel cells, to power the capsule and provide drinking water for the astronauts.
The purpose of running the oxygen tank fans was to ensure that the liquid in the fuel tanks would mix homogeneously in the tank, and to ensure that the gauges would produce accurate readings.
No sooner had Swigert pressed the fans' power button than, two minutes later, an explosion rang out, and the main alarm siren went off.
At the control center, the last hour of Liebergott's eight-hour shift had just begun, he was the first to realize that the mission was facing a problem. "The data was out of control, and there was pandemonium in the room. We didn't know what we were seeing," says Liebergott.
Libergott's work shift lasted from eight hours to three days. "Houston, we're having a problem here," Lovell told the control center. "It seems to me, looking outside the spacecraft, that something is leaking out of the spacecraft into space."
It became clear that this error was not caused by telemetry systems. "When the explosion happened, we didn't know what happened at first," Lovell says. "When I saw the oxygen leaking out, and I saw on the control panel that we were almost losing all the oxygen from the first tank, and that it was running out quickly from the second tank, I knew we were in serious trouble."
As TV stations raced for information, and programs cut to transmit footage from the Space Mission Control Center, Gene Kranz, the chief controller, ordered his team to come up with a "solution to the problem," and instructed everyone in the room to speak into speakers. And the loudspeaker only, and to seek the help of the technical support team and monitor the cause of the problem.
"We had no doubt that we would succeed in bringing the crew back alive to Earth," says Liebergott. "Space controllers don't accept failure."
But Lovell's confidence was shaken when he saw that the spacecraft was 200,000 miles from Earth, and still farther away. Lovell says, "We didn't have any solutions to return to Earth, and we didn't know what to do to get out of the impasse. Perhaps this stage was the worst in that space trip, as we didn't know whether we would return to Earth or not?"
By taking responsibility for the systems failure, Liebergott took on the task of salvaging as much oxygen and energy as possible from the damaged spacecraft. In light of his contingency plan in case one of the fuel cells failed, Liebergott intended to shut down the spacecraft's engines to lighten the load on the single remaining fuel cell.
Lovell says: "Our goal was to keep the fuel cell in the command module for as long as possible, so that astronauts could enter the moon landing module to operate the systems. We succeeded in that by detecting faults and treating them in an orderly manner so that the cells do not stop." fuel out of work.
In space, the mission crew wasted no time waiting for instructions. They had already begun to move towards the lunar lander, which was flawless, but Lovell knew from the start that the trip on board would not be comfortable.
"The lunar lander is very weak," says Lovell.
And Liebergott added: "We realized in the end that we would not be able to land on the moon, and that the mission would not achieve its goal, so we decided that the vehicle would revolve in return around the moon to face the Earth."
Over the following days, mission controllers worked around the clock, snoozing under their desks whenever they could, to bring the Apollo 13 crew back to Earth, as they had many problems to solve.
They were planning to use the spacecraft's propulsion system so that the spacecraft would not derail, and they came up with a way to get rid of the carbon dioxide and keep the astronauts alive, using plastic sheeting, an old sock and strong sticky tape to mount the square CO2 intakes that were located in the command unit.
"The success was the result of cooperation between two groups," says Lovell, who explained in his interview that the two groups had a difficult time. And he continued, "While the first group, which sits in the cozy control room where hot coffee and cigarettes are available, had to come up with ideas to help us return, the second group had to implement these decisions accurately from the cold and damp spacecraft."
Although the mission crew was able to turn the capsule back on for a safe return to Earth, thanks to the guidance of the spacecraft's electrical, environmental and communications systems monitoring team led by Liebergott, the mission crew's survival was not yet assured.
In order to save energy on the craft, the crew had to sacrifice the electrical power that maintains the temperature of the parachute systems.
"If the parachuting systems had failed, we would have stayed on course, and would have plunged too quickly into the water to survive," says Lovell.
It was not until April 17 that the observers of the space mission were sure that they had successfully completed the mission, when people around the world watched on television footage of the Apollo 13 capsule descending from the clouds, carried by three parachutes, to settle on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
The crew of the expedition became world heroes. After the control room staff passed out expensive cigarettes jubilantly at the success, Liebergott and the systems control team went home to get some sleep. A few days later they were back at work planning the next mission.
Today men and women sit behind the consoles of the Space Mission Control Center, but the principles established by Chris Kraft in the 1960s have not changed. The success of each space mission is attributed to the team effort. Behind every astronaut's success, hundreds of people work hard to ensure that the mission's crew is returned to Earth alive.
Nevertheless, Lovell says, the Apollo 13 mission will remain one of MSCC's finest achievements. "When I look back years ago, the Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion was probably the best thing that happened in the Apollo program," Lovell said.
You can read the original article on the BBC Future website.