An oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from Earth, and three astronauts survived by hiding in a lunar module designed for two — jury-rigging life support out of duct tape and a sock.
Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970, destination: the Moon. Two days into the mission, at 55 hours 55 minutes after liftoff, a damaged wire inside Oxygen Tank No. 2 ignited, blowing the tank apart and disabling both oxygen tanks in the service module. Commander Jim Lovell's famous words to Mission Control: 'Houston, we've had a problem.'
The three astronauts — Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise — abandoned the command module and retreated into the lunar module Aquarius, a craft designed to carry two men for 48 hours. They would need to survive in it for four days. The improvisation required was extraordinary.
A rapidly rising carbon dioxide level threatened to kill the crew. The command module's CO2 scrubber cartridges were square; the lunar module's were round. Mission Control's engineers had 15 minutes to design a solution from materials aboard the ship: cardboard, plastic bags, hoses, and socks. The improvised adapter worked.
To conserve power for reentry, the crew powered the command module down to near-zero, leaving the cabin so cold that water condensed on every surface. Haise developed a urinary tract infection from the cold. The crew slept fitfully, sipping a few ounces of water a day — far below the recommended intake.
The mission's only hope was to slingshot around the Moon and use its gravity to redirect the damaged spacecraft toward Earth. Without a functioning navigation computer, the crew had to manually calculate burns using the Earth and Sun as reference points — celestial navigation in a damaged spacecraft 200,000 miles from home.
The crisis became a global event. Hundreds of millions of people followed the rescue on television and radio. Pope Paul VI led prayers at St. Peter's Basilica. When the astronauts splashed down safely on April 17, the world exhaled — and NASA called it their 'finest hour.'