People usually ask when did apollo 13 happen because they want a date for a history quiz, but honestly, the calendar is the least interesting part of this story. It launched on April 11, 1970. Specifically, at 13:13 CST. If you’re superstitious, that’s a lot of thirteens packed into one afternoon. It was supposed to be a routine landing in the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. Instead, it became the most harrowing "successful failure" in the history of the United States space program.
The crisis didn't start at launch. For the first two days, things were actually boring. The crew—Commander Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise—were just hanging out in a tin can hurtling through the vacuum. Then, on the evening of April 13, everything broke.
The Explosion That Changed Everything
Imagine being 200,000 miles away from your house. You’re in a pressurized suit. You hear a "bang." That's what happened when an oxygen tank exploded in the Service Module. Jack Swigert looked at the gauges and saw the life literally draining out of their ship. He’s the one who actually said, "Houston, we've had a problem here." Most people remember the movie line "Houston, we have a problem," but in reality, it was a past-tense report of a present-tense nightmare.
When did Apollo 13 happen? It happened during a weird transition in American culture. We’d already been to the moon twice. People were getting bored. TV networks didn't even want to carry the live broadcasts from the ship anymore because the ratings were dipping. The explosion changed that instantly. Suddenly, the whole planet was glued to their radios.
The problem was simple and terrifying. Oxygen tank number two was gone. Tank number one was failing because the explosion damaged it. They were losing power. They were losing air. They were losing the ability to steer. Basically, the Command Module "Odyssey" was dying.
Survival in the LEM
The guys at Mission Control, led by Flight Director Gene Kranz, had to make a call fast. They decided to turn the Lunar Module (LM), nicknamed "Aquarius," into a lifeboat. This was never supposed to happen. The LM was designed to take two people to the lunar surface for a couple of days. Now, it had to keep three people alive for four days.
It was freezing.
To save power, they turned off the heaters. The temperature inside the ship dropped to just above freezing—about 3 degrees Celsius. Moisture from their breath started condensing on the walls and the wiring. They couldn't sleep because it was too cold. Fred Haise actually developed a serious kidney infection because they were so dehydrated and miserable. They were rationing water down to six ounces a day. Think about that. That's less than a soda can't worth of water while you're trying to calculate complex orbital physics in your head.
The "Square Peg in a Round Hole" Fix
You've probably heard about the carbon dioxide problem. This is the part where the engineers on the ground really earned their paychecks. The Odyssey used command module "lithium hydroxide canisters" to scrub $CO_2$ from the air. These were square. The Aquarius used round canisters. As the $CO_2$ levels spiked to dangerous levels, the crew started getting groggy. If they didn't fix it, they’d pass out and never wake up.
The engineers at NASA literally gathered all the junk available on the ship—plastic bags, cardboard covers from flight manuals, and grey duct tape. They built a makeshift adapter. They told the astronauts how to build it over the radio. It worked. It’s one of the greatest examples of "making do" in human history.
The Long Cold Arc Around the Moon
They couldn't just turn around. Space doesn't work like a car on a highway. They had to use the moon’s gravity as a slingshot. This meant they had to fly behind the moon, losing all contact with Earth for several minutes, before being whipped back toward home.
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During this time, Jim Lovell looked out the window at the lunar surface. He was supposed to walk on those rocks. Instead, he was just a passenger in a cold, damp, broken machine, watching his dream drift by at thousands of miles per hour. There's a specific kind of heartbreak in that, but there wasn't time to mope. They had to prep for re-entry.
Re-Entry: The Final Gamble
The biggest fear was the heat shield. Had the explosion cracked it? If it had, the ship would just vaporize when it hit the atmosphere. Also, remember all that condensation on the walls? When they powered the ship back up, everyone was terrified the water would short-circuit the electronics and fry the crew.
They hit the atmosphere on April 17, 1970.
Usually, the "blackout" period—where the heat of re-entry blocks radio signals—lasts about three minutes. For Apollo 13, it lasted over four minutes. In Houston, it was dead silence. People were holding their breath. Then, finally, Swigert’s voice came through the static. They had splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
Why Apollo 13 Still Matters Today
When we look back at when did apollo 13 happen, we're looking at the peak of 20th-century engineering. They didn't have iPhones. They didn't have modern GPS. They had slide rules and massive computers that have less processing power than a modern toaster.
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It taught NASA that failure is a data point. The investigation afterward found that the oxygen tank had been damaged years earlier during testing because of an incompatible voltage setting that fried the internal insulation. It was a tiny human error that almost killed three men.
Today, we use the lessons from Apollo 13 for everything from deep-sea exploration to the way we design redundant systems in autonomous cars. It’s the ultimate case study in "crisis management."
Key Takeaways for History Buffs
If you're trying to nail down the specifics of this mission for a project or just to win an argument at a bar, keep these details in mind:
- The exact dates: April 11 to April 17, 1970.
- The Crew: Jim Lovell (Commander), Jack Swigert (Command Module Pilot), Fred Haise (Lunar Module Pilot). Ken Mattingly was originally supposed to go but was grounded because he was exposed to the measles.
- The Location: They never landed. They reached a distance of roughly 248,655 miles from Earth—the farthest any human has ever been from our planet.
- The Recovery: They were picked up by the USS Iwo Jima.
Actionable Next Steps
If you want to go deeper into this, don't just rely on the Tom Hanks movie—though it is surprisingly accurate.
- Read "Lost Moon" by Jim Lovell. It’s the primary source and gives you the internal monologue of the guy who was actually steering the ship.
- Check out the NASA Apollo 13 Flight Journal. It’s a public record of every single word spoken between the ship and Houston. It’s fascinating to see how calm they stayed while facing certain death.
- Visit the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. That’s where the actual "Odyssey" Command Module is kept. Seeing the tiny size of that capsule in person changes your perspective on how brave those guys really were.
The story of Apollo 13 isn't just a date on a calendar. It's a reminder that even when everything goes completely wrong, human ingenuity usually finds a way to "steer the ship" back home.