Apollo 13 Research Paper

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April 11th: 45th Anniversary of Apollo 13 trip Forty-five years ago today the three astronauts on Apollo 13 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13) were thinking that it was going to be just another day of their moon mission adventure, not knowing that their travel into space was one of the first of NASA’s space missions to actually almost lose the lives of three men: NASA (www.nasa.gov) astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Sy Liebergot. Ruptured Oxygen Tank Causes Apollo 13 Problem Apollo 13 started off its space adventure just like most of the other Apollo moon mission trips. The mission launched on time at 2:13 EST, and then its second stage engine shut itself down two minutes early, but the remaining engines had to be burned longer to make up for that…show more content…
However, that part of their travel was never to occur, as the well-publicized accident on Apollo 13 that nearly took the lives of the three men happened 56 hours into their historic moon mission, when Lovell made the radio call, “Houston we have a dilemma.” The Apollo 13 had just experienced the explosion of the number two oxygen tank in the Service Module, which was caused by damage to insulation and the short circuit of fan wiring inside the tank. This in turn caused damage to several other things on the mission, including causing the crew to lose all of the module’s oxygen into space, thus putting them into even more dangerous of a situation. Getting Apollo 13 Back Home Safely The problem now was how to get the three Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely. They only thing they could do was try to burn the descent engine of the ship, and try to push it into what is called a free return trajectory. This, plus the moon’s gravity was hoped to allow the ship to travel back to the

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