Apollo 13 was intended to be the third crewed Moon landing, but an oxygen tank explosion in the Service Module 55 hours and 54 minutes into the flight turned the mission into a desperate fight for survival. Launched on April 11, 1970, atop a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center, the crew consisted of Commander James Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise. The now-famous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem” signaled one of the most harrowing emergencies in the history of spaceflight.

The explosion crippled the Service Module, knocking out two of three fuel cells and causing the loss of two oxygen tanks. With the Command Module Odyssey rapidly losing power, the crew was forced to abandon it and use the Lunar Module Aquarius as a lifeboat — a scenario never designed or tested. Mission Control in Houston worked around the clock to devise a free-return trajectory that would sling the spacecraft around the far side of the Moon and back toward Earth, reaching a record distance of 248,655 miles — the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth.

Among the most critical challenges was a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide in the cramped LM cabin. Engineers on the ground improvised a solution using cardboard, plastic bags, and duct tape to adapt the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters to fit the round LM receptacles. The crew endured freezing temperatures, severe water rationing, and near-total exhaustion over the four days it took to loop around the Moon and coast home.

On April 17, the crew powered up the frozen Command Module Odyssey using a special emergency procedure, jettisoned the Service Module (revealing the devastating damage for the first time), released the Lunar Module Aquarius, and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere with manual attitude control. They splashed down safely in the South Pacific and were recovered by the USS Iwo Jima. Though the Moon landing was lost, the mission became known as a “successful failure” — a testament to human ingenuity, teamwork, and the refusal to give up.