The famous “Houston. We have a problem ”he is 52 years old

It was April 13, 1970 when the Apollo 13 mission of the POT recorded an anomaly during its outward journey to the Moonwhich ended up becoming a real space odyssey.

Two days after liftoff, at 9:08 p.m., the astronaut Jack Swigert contacted mission control in Houston to say “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” right after observing a warning light on the ship’s control panel, accompanied by a bang, which turned out to be the explosion of the oxygen tanks in the service module. The image shows the damage, observed after separation of the command module.

From Houston, answered “Houston here. Repeat please”. Next, the mission commander, Jim Lovell, repeated. “Hey, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” “We have a voltage drop in the MAIN BUS B,” he added. “Understood, voltage drop on the MAIN BUS B”it was answered from Earth. “Well, wait Thirteen, we’re checking it out,” was added.

Meanwhile, a host of warning lights came on in series indicating the loss of two of the three power-generating sources, Wikipedia reports.

As a result, the POT was forced to abandon its plans to make the third manned moon landing. The destroyed tanks provided life support to the astronauts, so the new challenge was to return them safely to Earth.

The rescue plan consisted of using the Aquarius lunar module as a lifeboat and taking advantage of the inertia of passing through lunar orbit to gain speed and be able to reach Earth. The failure of the lunar mission ended up being a success in space history by getting the three astronauts to return to Earth alive.

Since then, the phrase ‘Houston, we have a problem’ It has become popular, being used to report – informally – the emergence of an unforeseen problem.