MIAMI.- It was April 13, 1970 when the Apollo 13 mission recorded an anomaly during his outward journey to the Moon, which ended up becoming a real space odyssey and went down in history as “Houston, we have a problem.”
Two days after liftoff, at 9:08 p.m., astronaut Jack Swigert contacted mission control in Houston to say “Well, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” just after noticing a warning light on the dashboard. control of the ship, accompanied by a bang, which turned out to be the explosion of the oxygen tanks in the service module. The image shows the damage, observed after the separation of the command module.
Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem”
From Houston, the response was “Houston here. Please repeat.” Then, the mission commander, Jim Lovell, repeated. “Hey, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” “We have a voltage drop on MAIN BUS B,” he added. “Understood, voltage drop on the MAIN BUS B,” was answered from Earth. “Well, wait Thirteen, we’re checking it,” he added.
Meanwhile, a large number of warning lights came on in series indicating the loss of two of the three power generating sources.
As a result, the NASA was forced to abandon its plans to carry out the third manned moon landing. The destroyed tanks provided life support to the astronauts, so the new challenge was to return them safely to Earth.
The rescue plan consisted of using the Aquarius lunar module as a lifeboat and taking advantage of the inertia of passing through lunar orbit to gain speed and reach Earth. The failure of the lunar mission ended up being a success in space history by getting the three astronauts back to Earth alive.
Since then, the phrase ‘Houston, we have a problem’ has become popular, used to informally report the emergence of an unforeseen problem.
Source: EUROPA PRESS
