Lucky 13

20 Lucky 13 In 1970, after the successful moon landings of Apollo 11 and 12, it was Apollo 13's turn to carry humans to the moon. The number 13 was considered unlucky, and some people wondered if it was a bad idea to give a spacecraft this number. But this is a story where 13 proved to be a lucky number indeed. About halfway to the moon, one of the oxygen tanks on Apollo 13 blew up. It ripped a huge hole in the side of the spacecraft, but no one was injured. A stroke of luck! Unfortunately, they would not be able to go to the moon. The truth was that they would probably not even make it back home. The craft was quickly losing oxygen, and the crew needed to conserve battery power while NASA figured out how to get the men back home. They shut down the power in the main spacecraft and used the attached moon lander as a " lifeboat" . They could survive using its oxygen, radio and rocket engines.

NASA told the crew to circle the moon and let its gravity shoot them back towards the earth. This meant that they would have to stay in the cold little moon lander for days. Mcanwhile, there was a concern that they wouldn't have enough water and oxygen. The next big step was to climb back into the main spacecraft and start it again. Would it start? It wasn't designed to sit in the bone-chilling cold of space without heat. If it wouldn't start, they would be lost in space forever. The astronauts followed NASA's instructions. And it worked! Some engineers thought this was a miracle. They now needed to enter the earth's atmosphere at exactly the right angle. If they were even slightly off, they would burn and perish. The whole world was watching to see if they would make it home alive. Luckily, they did enter at the right angle, and they didn't burn up. But, there was one more problem to overcome. Would the parachutes open after being frozen for so long? Well, you can guess what happened. The parachutes opened, and the spacecraft dropped safely into the ocean. To many, the Apollo 13 mission is considered a successful failure. The astronauts cheated death, and that made 13 a lucky number for the flight.