‘ Houston, we have a problem ‘, these were the words of help from astronaut Jack Swigert that would pass to posterity, and that gave way to a frenzy in which both the crew of Apollo 13 and the engineers and other members of the mission in Earth put their reaction capacity to the test. The explosion of one of the ship’s oxygen tanks made it impossible to land on the moon and endangered the survival of the astronauts but, fortunately, on April 17 the entire crew landed safely on our planet, aboard their peculiar boat lifeguard: the Aquarius .
Improvised inventions to survive the catastrophe
The Aquarius was the lunar module of Apollo 13, and its original function was to facilitate the landing on the Moon . Although he never fulfilled his mission, thanks to him the crew was able to escape the tragedy. To do this, the astronauts had to overcome several obstacles. On the one hand, the lunar module was prepared to hold two people for 45 hours, and not three for 90 hours. In addition, both the electricity supply and the water were limiting resources in the module, so they had to be rationed to the maximum. This caused, among other problems, that the temperatures in the lunar module dropped to almost 3 degrees, and the windows were partially frozen. The food was also cold, and as they did not have hot water they could not mix it with the dehydrated food.
Another issue to be resolved was the extraction of carbon dioxide from the module to avoid the intoxication of its crew members, for which lithium hydroxide was used. However, this was insufficient in the lunar module, so the members of the space mission devised a device that they called a ‘mailbox’ to carry out a transfer of the element from the containers of the command module to the lunar module.
Finally, upon approaching Earth, the astronauts completely separated the Aquarius from the rest of the spacecraft to begin the descent through the atmosphere.
In the midst of these tense moments, James Lovell , mission commander, even allowed himself to joke with the mission control operators: “Well, I can’t say that this week hasn’t been exciting,” he told them. They replied, “Okay, James, but if this is how you’re going to take care of the spaceships , we won’t leave you one more.” After entering the atmosphere and due to friction with the air, the connection with the control station was interrupted for more than three long minutes, but finally the lifeboat and its crew fell safely in the South Pacific, ending the first rescue operation in space .
