“Houston, We've Had A Problem”

Fifty years ago, an exploding oxygen tank pitched apollo 13 – nasa’s third planned lunar landing – into a scramble for survival. Thomas ellis charts the frantic efforts to bring the crew home as the world looked on

- Thomas Ellis

“Chris, you better get out here quick; I think we’ve had it!” It was the evening of Monday 13 April 1970 and Flight Director Gene Kranz was on the phone to his predecessor Chris Kraft who had been promoted to director of Flight Operations. What was happening with the Apollo 13’s Odyssey command module was unclear. While the Apollo 13 crew – Commander Jim Lovell, Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise and Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert – relayed readings and warning light indications in eerily restrained level tones, the atmosphere at Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center’s Mission Control was one of incredulity. The systems receiving data from the moon-bound spacecraft were reporting a bewildering cascade of problems with no observable pattern to unite them.

A little over 10 minutes earlier, Sy Liebergot, a controller at the Electrical, Environmental, and Consumables Management (EECOM) desk, had made the routine request that the crew “stir up” the Odyssey’s oxygen tanks. Stored in a cold ‘cryogenic’ state, oxygen and hydrogen flowed into three fuel cells where they were catalysed by electrodes to produce the lifeblood of the Apollo spacecraft: water, oxygen and electricity.