Apollo 13's oxygen tank explodes en route to the Moon

What happened

Apollo 13 launched on 11 April 1970 as the third planned Moon landing, but at 55 hours and 46 minutes into the mission, just after the crew finished a television broadcast, an oxygen tank in the service module exploded, disabling a second tank as well. Crewmember Jack Swigert radioed, 'Houston, we've had a problem here,' as the spacecraft lost two of its three fuel cells and the power, oxygen, and water they generated. Commander Jim Lovell, Swigert, and Fred Haise abandoned the planned landing and moved into the lunar module Aquarius, using it as a lifeboat for the trip around the Moon and back, conserving power and water while ground controllers worked out emergency return procedures. They splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa on 17 April 1970, five days, 22 hours after launch. A later investigation traced the explosion to damaged wiring insulation inside the tank, degraded years earlier when its internal heater voltage was upgraded without updating the thermostatic switches meant to protect it.

How we know

NASA's own mission-details page for Apollo 13 documents the exact timing of the explosion and the crew's return; the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum account of the mission independently corroborates the launch and splashdown dates.

Sources

• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Apollo 13 · Primary source (author-declared)airandspace.si.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• NASA. Apollo 13: Mission Details · Primary source (author-declared)nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)