Another spacecraft, launched two years before Pioneer 10, did something even more compelling. Instead of navigating the asteroid belt or interrogating Jupiter, it saved a human crew that could've been forever lost in space. Apollo 13 was headed for the moon. On April 11, , the spacecraft lifted off. Fifty-five hours and 55 minutes later, an explosion shut down almost every system necessary to sustain life onboard. The string of events leading to the explosion began in , with an oversight involving the oxygen tank thermostats.
Tank No. That set the stage for one of the most amazing collaborative rescues in history. So many things went wrong on Apollo 13, it's an engineering miracle that the crew — astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Hayes — made it home at all, let alone alive and well [source: Banke]. Minutes after the crew completed a television broadcast from space, telling America everything was going well, an explosion shook the spacecraft. One disaster led to another. When Tank No.
Immediately after, two of the craft's three fuel cells shut down. Apollo 13 was , miles , kilometers away from home, venting oxygen into space, and its normal supply of electric power, water , oxygen, heat and light had been cut off. The ingenuity that followed is a testament to the genius of the human mind and spirit.
To conserve whatever power, food, water and oxygen was left, the astronauts aboard Apollo 13 survived on almost no food , water and sleep and in temperatures that dropped to near freezing.
The crew members lost a combined They did months of calculation in days. They found a way to get the lunar module to support the crew and get the spacecraft back to Earth , although it was never intended for that purpose.
The canisters that removed carbon dioxide from the command module didn't fit the system in the lunar module. So Mission Control found a way for the astronauts to make them fit using tools they had onboard: cardboard, plastic bags and tape. Still, with no controls, no extended life support and no navigation system, the biggest problem of all was how to get the craft into a trajectory for an Earth landing.
Apollo 13 had already made the planned adjustments for a moon landing before the initial explosion. Mission control developed a plan. The onboard navigation was based on finding a key star. That system was out. In three hours, NASA found a way to use the sun instead, a series of calculations that would normally take three months; and they found a way to use the moon's pull to get the craft into the right position, because they had to save all of the power for the trip home.
The calculations based on the sun turned out to be accurate to within less than 1 degree. Apollo 13 rounded the moon and descended toward Earth. So much condensation had built up on the walls of the lunar module from the days of cold that when the spacecraft finally powered up -- and heated up -- for the trip home, it rained inside the cabin [source: NASA ].
Apollo 13 landed successfully on April 17, , in the Pacific Ocean. While all of the astronauts were fine, the spacecraft, of course, was not. But that was typical for the time.
NASA didn't have a working reusable spacecraft until , when the first space shuttle , named Columbia, made history. The Apollo rockets were single-use spacecraft. The cost per mission was, well, astronomical. A reusable spacecraft would not only save money, but it would also be an amazing technological advance.
After President Richard Nixon announced the plan to build a reusable spacecraft that would run multiple, perhaps indefinite numbers of missions, NASA developed the basic design: two solid rocket boosters attached to an orbiter module and an external fuel tank.
There were considerable hurdles facing the project. Since the equipment that protected previous spacecraft from Earth's searing atmosphere essentially disintegrated during re-entry, NASA needed an entirely new heat-shield concept.
It came up with a method of coating the craft with ceramic tiles that would absorb the heat without degrading. The other major redesign had to do with the landing itself. The old spacecraft basically plummeted through the atmosphere and splashed down in the ocean.
It's tough to reuse equipment after a water landing. The new spacecraft would land more like a glider, on an actual landing strip. It took nine years from the start of the project to the first flight. In , the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off and its maiden mission was successful.
NASA had succeeded in creating a reusable spacecraft. Columbia was followed by four other space shuttles: Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. An amazing collaborative effort, the ISS was made to advance space exploration.
Now let's return to the early days of that noble pursuit for a story about the first people who ever laid eye upon the far side of the moon Before NASA could put a man on the moon, the agency needed to know that it had the technology to bring a crew out there in the first place. Any such trek would present a gigantic challenge. By , a handful of people had gone up into space, but none of those early pioneers left low-Earth orbit in the process.
Yet adversity can be a great motivator. Jeff Foust jeff thespacereview. He also operates the Spacetoday. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. The original requirements for the shuttle included no capability for doing spacewalking, since NASA envisioned the shuttle as more like an airplane that would take off, deliver its satellite, and return to Earth. That's about 8, days of manned spaceflight, NASA officials said.
Atlantis will add another orbits to that tally. That includes the 13 days of the final shuttle flight, as well as the other 31, hours, 59 minutes and 33 seconds of all other missions. Some spaceflyers actually launched into orbit on Russian Soyuz vehicles and returned home on a shuttle.
That breaks down to men and 49 women hailing from 16 different countries. Of the missions, flights went as planned, with two ending in disaster. The shuttles that have launched into space are: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!
And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.
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