Apollo 13 Research Paper

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Apollo 13
“3,2,1 Blast off!” The Apollo 13 spacecraft was launched into space on April 11, 1970. Apollo 13 was to be the third attempt to land on the moon. The crew was made up of three astronauts: Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert. Little did these three crew members know, they were onboard the spacecraft that would one day would be considered NASA’s greatest failure. These astronauts were trained to handle any situation in space no matter how severe the case was. Although people have heard of this disaster, not many people have a clear understanding of the problems that occurred during that voyage. Fortunately, these three astronauts had the courage to solve the problems under immense pressure.
Jim Lovell was a 4-time space traveler …show more content…

John attended three different schools. He received a Bachelors science degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado in 1953, his Masters of science degree in Aerospace science in 1965. He had also held a position as an engineering test pilot for North American Aviation, Inc. before he joined NASA. He also was in the Air force from 1953 to 1956 and was assigned to take a flight to Japan and Korea. John got a presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970 and NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal. He even had a total of one hundred forty hours and fifty-four minutes of space travel and was a lunar module pilot aboard Apollo 13. John was one of the astronauts that were exposed to German measles. John Swigert resigned NASA in August 1977 where he began to run into politics. In 1979 he was vice president of the B.D.M corporations in Golden Colorado. In 1982 he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representative in …show more content…

There was a small lick in the liquid oxygen tank that little by little caused a big explosion that made pilot Jim Lovell think of something to do before they run out of air. Without oxygen there was no oxygen air and power for the shuttle, which made Jim Lovell tell him about the big problem and told them to power down their gumdrop shaped command module. This made the spacecraft conserve its batteries for the Earth reentry by using the lunar module as a lifeboat for the mission. Apollo 13 was also NASA’s third planned lunar landing mission. The command service and lunar modules were then on “free return” trajectory which in the case of the engine loss would completely sling shot around the Moon and back to Earth. This launch the center engine of the 5-11 stage shut down more than two minute early this caused the remaining four engines to burn 34 second longer than planed. The s-ivb third stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in

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