Apollo 13

:This article is about the Moon mission. There is also a movie by the name of Apollo 13.

Mission notes

• Swigert was a replacement for Ken Mattingly, who later flew to the Moon aboard Apollo 16. Mattingly was reportedly exposed to German measles prior to the mission, and NASA officials insisted upon removing him from the flight so as not to endanger the mission. He never contracted the sickness and played a critical role in the crisis working on the simulator to help devise a means for the crew to return home safely.
• There was no time to properly replace the original lunar plaque on Aquarius (which bore Mattingly's name), so Jim Lovell was given a replacement (with Swigert's name) to place over the original plaque once they landed on the moon. However, because the lunar landing was never made, Lovell kept the plaque, which is one of the few mementos from the mission that he has on display at his home.
• As a result of following the free return trajectory, the altitude of Apollo 13 over the lunar far side was approximately 100 km greater than the corresponding orbital altitude on the remaining Apollo lunar missions. This could mean an all-time altitude record for human spaceflight—not even superseded as of 2005—but this may well not be the case: the variation in distance between Earth and the Moon owing to the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit about Earth is much larger than this 100 km. The Guinness Book of Records did list this flight as having the absolute altitude record for a manned spacecraft, but if this is so, then Lovell should have received a certificate from them attesting to this record (Lovell stated in the book Lost Moon that apart from the plaque and a couple of other pieces of salvage, the only other item he has regarding this mission was a letter from Charles Lindbergh).
• The splashdown point was {{coor dm|21|38|S|165|22|W|}}, SE of American Samoa and 6.5 km (4 mi) from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima.
• There was another not quite so famous failure on this mission which could have been equally catastrophic. During second stage burn the center engine shut down. It was later discovered that this was due to dangerous pogo oscillations which might have torn the second stage apart. Luckily the oscillations caused a low pressure reading to register, and the computer shut the engine down automatically.
• Superstitious people have often associated the belief that 13 is an unlucky number to the mission, especially due to the fact that the mission began at 13:13, the problems began on April 13, and the mission is called Apollo 13.