WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 29BY THE SPRING OF 1970,
the Apollo program was rolling along
at full speed. The first landing, and
subsequent return trip with loftier
scientific goals, were successes. Now,
NASA had planned a third mission to
the Moon’s surface that would again
deepen the scientific return from the
venture and increase the complexity
of the experiments.
Launch for what would be termed
Apollo 13 was set for April 11, 1970,
and would use the same spacecraft
configuration employed for the pre-
vious two missions. The crew for
Apollo 13 consisted of Commander
Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot
Jack Swigert, and Lunar Module Pilot
Fred Haise. This was not the original
plan, however.
By tradition, the rotation would
have composed the crew as
Commander Gordon Cooper,
Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele,
and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar
Mitchell. But both Cooper and Eisele
were on rocky terms with NASA man-
agement at this point in their careers,
for different reasons — Cooper had a
relaxed attitude toward training, and
Eisele had failed to impress with
Apollo 7 and was involved in an extra-
marital relationship. Because of theThere’s a special poignancy to these images of Earth, at a “half-illuminated” phase, taken by
the Apollo 13 crew on their way to the Moon on April 12, 1970. These were the last pictures
they took of their home planet before the explosion which might have made their return to
Earth impossible. Small movements between exposures have produced some very
interesting depth effects of the image.
The Apollo 13 lunar module, Aquarius, is shown here still inside the Saturn third stage. The
component pictures for this stereo view were taken from the command module, Odyssey, as it
approached Aquarius for docking and extraction from the rocket’s third stage. At the controls, Jack
Swigert led a crew that was still happily on its way to the Moon, unaware of impending trouble.