The nation's Moon landing program suffered a shocking setback on Jan. 27, 1967, with the deaths of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” GrissomAs a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, Grissom was the second American to fly in space in 1961. He was also the second American to fly in space twice, preceded only by Joe Walker with his sub-orbital X-15 flights.https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Gus_Grissom
On April 13, 1970, disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A.
Apollo 1 was expected to fly to Earth orbit later in 1967 with astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White on board. During a test on the launch pad, however, a fire erupted and rapidly asphyxiated all three astronauts.
Apollo 13 was NASA's third moon-landing mission, but the astronauts never made it to the lunar surface. During the mission's dramatic series of events, an oxygen tank explosion almost 56 hours into the flight forced the crew to abandon all thoughts of reaching the moon.
Two Apollo missions were failures: a 1967 cabin fire killed the entire Apollo 1 crew during a ground test in preparation for what was to be the first crewed flight; and the third landing attempt on Apollo 13 was aborted by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon, which disabled the CSM Odyssey's electrical power ...
The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. 2 in the service module. The explosion ruptured a line or damaged a valve in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly.
During the nail biting 12.5 minute descent from lunar orbit, the LM's onboard computer (most critically needed during landing) shut down and recycled 5 times due to an erroneous checklist that had the crew turn on their ship's radar too early resulting in multiple data overloads.
Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA's Apollo program, died Tuesday in Houston.
For the Apollo 13 mission, the blackout was much longer than normal because the flight path of the spacecraft was unexpectedly at a much shallower angle than normal.
Once it finally did (6 hours after the accident), it took and an hour and a half for the bodies of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee to be recovered from the burned out husk of Apollo 1. The heat of the fire had fused the astronauts to the cabin's nylon interior. The official cause of death was asphyxiation.
The mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM).
Thankfully, as it turned out ,the heat shield wasn't damaged. But almost miraculously, Woodfill said, the command module and service module remained connected following the explosion, while the internal pressure of the explosion rocketed the exterior panel into space.
With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth on April 17, 1970. On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was launched from Florida, carrying astronauts James A.
At approximately 4:46 p.m. EDT Aug. 7, Apollo 15 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 335 miles north of Honolulu, ending a flight of 12 days, seven hours.
An explosion 56 hours into the mission happened before the command module and lunar module had separated, so the crew were able to use the intact lunar module as a lifeboat with its own power sources, rockets and oxygen supply.
After orbiting the Moon 31 times, Apollo 10 returned safely to Earth; its success enabled the first crewed landing during Apollo 11 two months later.
Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 10:51 a.m. EST Dec. 27. The splashdown was about 5,100 yards from the recovery ship USS Yorktown, 147 hours after launch and precisely on time.
On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27. On July 20 of the following year, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first men to walk on the moon.
After the crew re-boarded Columbia, the Eagle was abandoned in lunar orbit. Although its ultimate fate remains unknown, some calculations by the physicist James Meador published in 2021 showed that Eagle could theoretically still be in lunar orbit.
Mitchell entered the changes with minutes to go until planned ignition. A second problem occurred during the powered descent, when the LM landing radar failed to lock automatically onto the Moon's surface, depriving the navigation computer of vital information on the vehicle's altitude and vertical descent speed.
Fast Facts: Apollo 12
The Apollo 12 spacecraft was struck by lightning twice just after launch, temporarily knocking out electrical power and telemetry – but this didn't stop a successful mission.
NASA's subsequent investigation revealed that the No. 2 oxygen tank onboard Apollo 13 had been accidentally dropped during maintenance before the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, causing slight internal damage that didn't show up in later inspections.
It's the story of the engine that brought those astronauts home, and the chemist who invented it. On April 13, 1970, Gerard Elverum's pintle injector rocket engine fired for 34 seconds to put the damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft on a safe path back to Earth.
Glynn Lunney, the NASA flight director who led the rescue of three Apollo 13 astronauts when their spacecraft ran into trouble en route to the moon, has died aged 84.