Apollo 13
Welcome to day 26 of my blog! This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 incident. Today I will tell you about the "successful failure" (NASA's words) in simple terms. Hope you enjoy!
50 years ago, on 11th April 1970, a NASA rocket was launched into space to go to the moon and land. This was the 3rd time NASA were planning to land on the moon. The 2 rockets beforehand - Apollo 11 and 12 - had successfully made it to the moon with no casualties. However, this was different. Apollo 13 was designed to be the best rocket yet, making it to the moon in the shortest time possible. But something went wrong. Here, today, I will tell you about it.
In Florida, USA, at Kennedy space centre, the rocket Apollo 13 or XIII launched to go to the moon. Because of recent landings in the past, no-one was interested in the launch or mission and no TV companies were streaming it. The crew on board the ship were the astronauts Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly (who was actually replaced by Jack Swigert before takeoff) and Fred Haise. The crew told ground control or 'Houston', as some may call it, that all services were working as usual and even perfectly. 9 minutes after the message was received, the worst happened; 1 of 2 oxygen tanks exploded. They didn't just help the crew breathe but the tanks were also powering 3 fuel cells and as bad as things could be, the explosion of the first tank damaged the second tank too! The mission to land on the moon was sadly abandoned and the new goal was to get the shuttle with the men safely back to Earth. By now, this had captured the world's attention and a quarter of the world had tuned in live to see if the men would make it back to Earth. Back at Houston, the ground control crew were rushing around to do everything they could to create something to fix the tight situation. They went through everything on the ship that could be sacrificed to prevent the worst from happening. Theories included that the explosion damaged the command module causing the parachutes to fail - the result; death for the astronauts! But that never happened and the rocket-men lived to see another day thanks to the brainy people in Houston. They successfully entered the Earth's atmosphere on 17th April 1970. In 1995, a film was made about the events I just told you about starring Tom Hanks and if you don't know who Tom Hanks is, get on top of that!
#onesockdays
50 years ago, on 11th April 1970, a NASA rocket was launched into space to go to the moon and land. This was the 3rd time NASA were planning to land on the moon. The 2 rockets beforehand - Apollo 11 and 12 - had successfully made it to the moon with no casualties. However, this was different. Apollo 13 was designed to be the best rocket yet, making it to the moon in the shortest time possible. But something went wrong. Here, today, I will tell you about it.
In Florida, USA, at Kennedy space centre, the rocket Apollo 13 or XIII launched to go to the moon. Because of recent landings in the past, no-one was interested in the launch or mission and no TV companies were streaming it. The crew on board the ship were the astronauts Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly (who was actually replaced by Jack Swigert before takeoff) and Fred Haise. The crew told ground control or 'Houston', as some may call it, that all services were working as usual and even perfectly. 9 minutes after the message was received, the worst happened; 1 of 2 oxygen tanks exploded. They didn't just help the crew breathe but the tanks were also powering 3 fuel cells and as bad as things could be, the explosion of the first tank damaged the second tank too! The mission to land on the moon was sadly abandoned and the new goal was to get the shuttle with the men safely back to Earth. By now, this had captured the world's attention and a quarter of the world had tuned in live to see if the men would make it back to Earth. Back at Houston, the ground control crew were rushing around to do everything they could to create something to fix the tight situation. They went through everything on the ship that could be sacrificed to prevent the worst from happening. Theories included that the explosion damaged the command module causing the parachutes to fail - the result; death for the astronauts! But that never happened and the rocket-men lived to see another day thanks to the brainy people in Houston. They successfully entered the Earth's atmosphere on 17th April 1970. In 1995, a film was made about the events I just told you about starring Tom Hanks and if you don't know who Tom Hanks is, get on top of that!
#onesockdays
Number 13 is known as an unlucky number, but in this case the astronauts were very lucky to have a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteYou are getting very good at this and I think you should be a writer.
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