The technique worked, but it took eight hours of 65-volt DC power from the ground support equipment to dissipate the oxygen. 2 by using the electrical heater within the tank. After a conference with contractor and NASA personnel, the test director decided to “boil off” the remaining oxygen in No. An interim discrepancy report was written, and on March 27, two weeks before launch, detanking operations resumed. Gaseous oxygen at 80 pounds per square inch was applied through the vent line to expel the liquid oxygen, but to no avail. 2 dropped to only 92 percent of capacity. The tanks normally are emptied to about half full.

The tank was fixed, tested at the factory, installed in the Apollo 13 service module and tested again during the Countdown Demonstration Test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center beginning March 16, 1970. 2 oxygen tank, serial number 10024X-TA0009, had been previously installed in the service module of Apollo 10, but was removed for modification and damaged in the process. Ground tests before launch indicated the possibility of a poorly insulated supercritical helium tank in the lunar module, or LM, descent stage, so the flight plan was modified to enter the LM three hours early in order to obtain an onboard readout of helium tank pressure. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly had no immunity to measles and was replaced by backup command module pilot, John “Jack” Swigert. This caused the remaining four engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in orbit.ĭays before the mission, backup lunar module pilot, Charles Duke, inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles. Then the center engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. At 5 1/2 minutes after liftoff, John “Jack” Swigert, Fred Haise and James Lovell felt a little vibration.

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