Apollo 13: Bringing Everyone Home

The photograph of three astronauts waving from a recovery ship records an arrival that had become far more important than their original destination. Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert were supposed to land on the Moon. On April 17, 1970, simply bringing them back to Earth was enough to make Apollo 13 unforgettable. The mission had become a test of how much could be done with a spacecraft that no longer worked as designed.

Apollo 11 had made the first landing nine months earlier, and Apollo 12 had followed it. Apollo 13, launched on April 11, was intended to extend lunar exploration into the Fra Mauro region. Swigert had replaced command module pilot Ken Mattingly shortly before launch because of concern about exposure to German measles. A disrupted crew assignment was serious, but it was not the emergency that would define the flight.