Apollo 13 Exploration Objective

The Apollo 13 exploration objective was to land in the Fra Mauro Area of the moon, but a sudden oxygen tank explosion prevented the spacecraft from landing, and facilitated changes to be made to the space program. To make interstellar travel believable NASA was created. The Apollo program was the idea that man could travel, walk upon, and see the moon. Apollo 13, the third human lunar landing and exploration mission, had been tentatively scheduled in July 1969 for launch in March 1970, but by the end of the year the launch date had been shifted to April. In August 1969 crew assignments for Apollo 13 were announced. The target for the mission was the Fra Mauro Formation, a site of major interest to scientists,
specifically a spot just north of the crater Fra Mauro, west-southwest of the center of the Moon's near side. On March 24, 1970, during the countdown demonstration test for Apollo 13, Kennedy Space Center test engineers encountered a problem with an oxygen tank in the service module. The spacecraft carried two tanks, each holding 320 pounds of supercritical oxygen. They provided the oxygen for the command module atmosphere and three fuel cells, which were the spacecraft's primary source of electrical power. The chemical reaction in the cells produced water, which not only supplied the crew's drinking water but was circulated through cooling plates to remove heat from critical electronic components. The tanks were designed to operate at pressures of 865 to 935 pounds per square inch and temperatures between -340 degrees F and 80 degrees. Inside each spherical tank were a quantity gauge, a thermostatically controlled heating element, and two stirring fans driven by electric motors. it tended to stratify, leading to erroneous quantity readings. The spacecraft was launched on April 11, 1970. The crew ignited their main engine to put the spacecraft on a hybrid trajectory, a flight path that saved fuel in reaching the desired lunar landing point. At 46:40 the crew switched on the fans in the oxygen tanks briefly. A few seconds later the quantity indicator for tank number two went off the high end of the scale, where it stayed. The tanks were stirred twice more during the next few hours, after a master alarm had indicated low pressure in a hydrogen tank, the Mission Control Center (MCC) directed the crew to switch on all tank stirrers and heaters. Shortly thereafter the crew heard a loud banging and felt unusual vibrations in the spacecraft. Mission controllers noticed that all telemetry readings from the spacecraft dropped out for 1.8 seconds. In the command module, the caution and warning system alerted the crew to low voltage on d.c. main bus B, one of two power distribution systems in the spacecraft. At this point command module pilot Jack Swigert told Houston, "Hey, we've had a problem here." Shortly after the accident, mission commander James Lovell reported seeing a swarm of particles surrounding the spacecraft.
Particles could easily be confused with stars, and the sole means of determining the spacecraft's attitude was by locating certain key stars in the onboard sextant. Navigational sightings from the lunar module (LM) were difficult in any case as long as it was attached to the command module. Flight controllers decided to align the lunar module's guidance system with that in the command module while the CM still had power. That done, the last fuel cell and all systems in the command module were shut down, and the crew moved into the lunar module. Their survival depended on this craft's oxygen and water supplies, guidance system, and descent propulsion engine (DPS). Normally all course corrections were made using the service propulsion system (SPS) on the service module, but flight controllers ruled out using it, partly because it required more electrical power than was available and partly because no one knew whether the service module had been structurally weakened by the explosion. If it had, an SPS burn might be dangerous. The DPS would have to serve in its
place. Unfortunately for Apollo 13, the tank functioned normally for the first 56 hours of the mission, when the heaters and the fans were energized during routine operations. At that point an arc from a short circuit probably ignited the Teflon, and the rapid pressure rise that followed either ruptured the tank or damaged the conduit carrying wiring into the tank, expelling high-pressure oxygen. The board could not determine exactly how the tank failed or whether additional combustion occurred outside the tank, but the pressure increase blew off the panel covering that sector of the service module and damaged the directional antenna, causing the interruption of telemetry observed in Houston. It also evidently damaged the oxygen distribution system, or the other oxygen tank, as well, leading to the loss of all oxygen supplies and aborting the mission. The board pointed out that although the circumstances of the tank failure, Apollo 13 was a failure whose causes had to be eliminated as completely as possible.
It recommended that the oxygen tanks be modified to remove all combustible material from contact with oxygen and that all test procedures be thoroughly reviewed for adequacy. Apollo 13 was only a frightening near-miss, and because its cause was localized and comparatively easy to discover, it had fewer adverse effects on the program. Only the skill and dedication of hundreds of members of the often-celebrated "manned space flight team" saved it, however, and the accident served to remind NASA and the public that human flight in space, no matter how commonplace it seemed to the casual observer, was not a routine operation. Apollo 13 pivoted from a moon-bound landing unit o a crippled vessel. While the space flight stands today as a demonstration of NASA innovation saving lives. Shows the dangers of
space. The changes after Apollo 13 were applied to Apollo 14, cleaning up their “disaster.” The changes made were a command, service modules, inside module, etc. There are more numerous changes to Apollo 14. Apollo 13 was a “successful failure!” Safety returned back to earth after a oxygen tank explosion prevented the spacecraft from landing on the moon and puts its three man crew in danger.