View from a lifeboat Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert launched from NASAKennedy on April 11, 1970. They were headed to the Fra Mauro region of the Moon for the third lunar landing ever. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until the third day of the mission, when an oxygen tank ruptured and Swigert uttered those famous words: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” The new mission plan was to abandon the Moon landing, loop around the Moon, and get the crew home safely as quickly as possible. The crew needed to go into “lifeboat mode,” using the lunar module Aquarius to save the spacecraft and crew. The Apollo 13 crew took this photo of the Moon from the lunar module as they passed by. On April 17, the crew returned to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa. The Apollo 13 mission is sometimes called a “successful failure”: Though the crew couldn’t achieve their scientific goals, the rescue mission was a huge victory for NASA. The lessons lea...