Houston, We Have a Problem

Today, April 13 2012, 42 years ago, Apollo 13 Mission failed. It was the third intended Mission to land on the Moon, though it never reached it.

When approaching the Moon, the astronauts heard and explosion, and they thought a meteoroid might have struck the Lunar Module, but in fact it was an oxygen tank the one that produced the noise after exploding. The mission was then aborted and the team in charge of this mission started to think of a way to come back to the Earth. The situation was critical because of the lack of oxygen, which was not only used to breathe but also to produce elctricity, so communication was also in danger.

They decided to turn off every element which was not strictly compulsory, including the heaters, so water started to condense, what was a danger for electrical equipment, putting the life of the crew at risk, since parachutes were boosted by batteries, and if these were flooded, parachutes could not open.

Finally, after all the hard work carried out by both the ground station and the module lead to a safe landing in the ocean.

Currently, DeLaCosa CanSat Team is finalising details as we're leaving in one week to Norway to launch our CanSat. Just as Apollo 13 crew, we're having some last minute problems, though fortunately, ours have not such a great impact since they do not mean millions lost or, what is more important, human life loss.

In the following record you can listen to the famous sentence, which was not actually "Houston, we have a problem" but "Houston, we've had a problem here"

Artículo en español