The lunar modules’ ascending stages were also employed for seismology. The now useless spacecraft was discarded and ordered by Mission Control to crash the Moon’s surface at a precise spot near an ALSE after the lunar landing crew had transferred everything coming back to Earth from the lunar module and closed it out. One of these carefully orchestrated wrecks yielded some startlingly bizarre effects. The shock wave from Apollo 12’s lunar module Intrepid slamming with the lunar surface vibrated through the Moon for more than 55 minutes. The continuous propagation of the wave was subsequently attributed to the Moon’s dryness, as dry rocks did not damper the waves as effectively as they do on Earth.
Apollo 9, Apollo 10, and Apollo 13 were the three outliers. The lunar module of Apollo 9 burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere because it was an Earth orbital mission. Snoopy, the lunar module of Apollo 10, was launched into solar orbit and remains there today. On the way back to Earth, Apollo 13 used their lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat, allowing it to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry.
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What happened to the Aquarius lunar module from Apollo 13?
The initial plan for the Apollo 13 Lunar Module (LM or LEM) was to land in the Fra Mauro region of the Moon. The Apollo 13 lunar landing mission was abandoned two days after launch on April 13, 1970, when an oxygen tank on the Command and Service Module (CSM) overheated and exploded. Because the CSM could not provide life support, the LM, which was meant to support two men for 45 hours, was used as a lifeboat to house the three astronauts (Commander James A. Lovell Jr., CSM pilot John L. Swigert Jr., and LM pilot Fred W. Haise Jr.) for 90 hours. For the duration of the voyage, energy and water usage were dramatically reduced, and the CM lithium hydroxide cannisters, which were used to scrub carbon dioxide from the air, were converted for use on the LM. The LM descent engine was used to speed the spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth as the Apollo 13 proceeded on to the Moon. The astronauts returned to the Command Module for reentry after the LM was discarded soon before reaching Earth. The LM re-entered the atmosphere over the southwest Pacific and burned up, with any remaining fragments crashing into the deep ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
Lunar Module Spacecraft and Subsystems
The lunar module was a two-stage spacecraft that was planned to conduct operations near and on the Moon. The mass of the LM was 15,188 kg, which included crew, expendables, and 10,691 kg of propellants. The LM’s ascent and descent stages worked together until staging, at which point the ascent stage became a single spacecraft for rendezvous and docking with the command and service module (CSM). The descending stage was an octagonal prism 4.2 meters across and 1.7 meters thick that made up the lowest half of the spaceship. The bottom of the descent stage was suspended 1.5 meters above the surface by four landing legs with spherical footpads installed on the sides of the stage. On opposing landing legs, the distance between the ends of the footpads was 9.4 meters. A small astronaut egress platform and ladder were built into one of the legs. From the stage’s bottom, a one-meter-long conical descending engine skirt protruded. The landing rocket, two tanks of aerozine 50 fuel, two tanks of nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer, water, oxygen, and helium tanks, and storage space for lunar equipment and experiments, as well as the lunar rover in the case of Apollo 15, 16, and 17. The fall stage was created to serve as a launch pad for the ascent stage from the Moon.
The climb stage was a 2.8-meter-high, 4.0-by-4.3-meter-wide irregularly shaped unit mounted on top of the fall stage. The astronauts were housed in a 6.65 cubic meter pressurized crew compartment on the ascent stage. On one side, there was an ingress-egress gate, and on top, there was a docking hatch for connecting to the CSM. A parabolic rendezvous radar antenna, a steerable parabolic S-band antenna, and two in-flight VHF antennas were also placed along the top. Above and to either side of the egress hatch were two triangular windows, and four thrust chamber assemblies were positioned around the sidewalls. The ascending engine located at the very bottom of the unit. The stage also had tanks for helium, liquid oxygen, gaseous oxygen, and reaction control fuel, as well as an aerozine 50 fuel and oxidizer tank. In the LM, there were no seats available. A control console was situated above the ingress-egress hatch and between the windows in the front of the crew compartment, with two more control panels mounted on the side walls. At the conclusion of lunar surface operations, the ascent stage was to be launched from the Moon, returning the men to the CSM.
A deep-throttling ablative rocket with a maximum thrust of around 45,000 N was installed on a gimbal ring in the center of the descent stage as the descent engine. The ascension engine was a constant-thrust, fixed-thrust rocket with a thrust of around 15,000 N. The reaction control system, which comprised of four thrust modules, each with four 450 N thrust chambers and nozzles pointing in separate directions, was used to maneuver. The S-band antenna was used for telemetry, TV, voice, and range communications with Earth. The astronauts and the LM, as well as the LM and the circling CSM, communicated through VHF. Both S-band and VHF tranceivers and equipment were redundant. The electronics and cabin were kept at a constant temperature thanks to an environmental management system that regenerated oxygen. Six silver-zinc batteries provided power. A radar ranging system, an inertial measurement unit with gyroscopes and accelerometers, and the Apollo guidance computer provided guidance and navigation control.
Is Eagle still in lunar orbit?
The Eagle was abandoned in lunar orbit when the crew re-boarded Columbia. Although its eventual destiny is unclear, physicist James Meador’s simulations released in 2021 suggested that Eagle may conceivably still be in lunar orbit.
What happened to the service module of Apollo 13?
An explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. 2 in the service module caused the Apollo 13 malfunction. The explosion damaged or punctured a line in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to rapidly lose oxygen.
On Apollo 13, who perished?
The crew of Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise, and command module pilot John “Jack” Swigert were among the Apollo 13 astronauts.
Is Jim Lovell the only person who has ever walked on the Moon?
Apollo 13 was the second mission to investigate the western lunar areas without using a free-return trajectory. Lovell and his crew re-established the free return trajectory that they had left, and swung around the Moon to return home, using the Apollo Lunar Module as a “life boat” that provided battery power, oxygen, and propulsion. Lovell had to manually operate the Lunar Module’s thrusters and engine twice to change the course based on the flight controllers’ estimations on Earth.
On April 17, Apollo 13 safely returned to Earth. “I’m afraid this will be the final lunar expedition for a long time,” Lovell stated. NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine quickly rebutted his remark, assuring the public that NASA would continue to send missions to the Moon. Apollo 14 would make the journey to Fra Mauro nine months later, with improved fuel tanks and an extra battery for emergencies.
The flight path of Apollo 13 provides Lovell, Haise, and Swigert the record for the farthest distance traveled by humans from Earth. Lovell is one of only three men to have visited the Moon twice, although he never walked on it, unlike the other two, John Young and Gene Cernan. On his Gemini and Apollo missions, he logged 715 hours and 5 minutes in space, a personal best that stood until the 1973 Skylab 3 mission.
Who is the owner of the moon?
The quick answer is that the Moon is not owned by anyone. This is due to a provision of international law. The United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty of 1967 states that space does not belong to any one country. “The exploration and utilization of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, should be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the domain of all people,” it states (via UN).
The treaty goes on to say that “outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind,” and that “outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind.”