NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson, we have an anniversary.
Cosmosphere is commemorating the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission this week, the 'successful failure' when NASA brought three astronauts home alive after an explosion in space. The mission took place from April 11 to April 17, 1970.
"Fred Haise, who was the lunar module pilot for the flight, said that they had the fewest anomalies of any flight to that point, which is interesting," said Mimi Meredith with Cosmosphere. "It truly was going practically perfectly, then they had the explosion of the oxygen tank in the service module."
An important artifact from that mission is in the Cosmosphere collection.
"The Cosmosphere has the actual command module from the mission," Meredith said. "It's the module that was at the top of the rocket. That's what they climbed into to launch and it is what the command module pilot stays in and orbits around the moon."
The module is on loan from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and was restored by Cosmosphere SpaceWorks staff.
"They weren't sure when they got back into the command module after having used the ascent stage and the lunar module as their little 'life raft' to try and conserve oxygen, not only did it keep them alive, it shows all of those elements of what heat it endured in re-entry."
SpaceWorks created 80% of the props for the film adaptation directed by Ron Howard.
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