NASA Apollo 13 Upper Stage Impacted the Moon During the Flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The astronauts aboard the aborted flight of NASA's Apollo 13 may not have landed on the Moon, one section of their spacecraft did make a landing for scientific results.

The third stage of the Saturn V rocket known as the S-IVB was used to place the crew in the direction of the Moon. The S-IVB-508 stage housed the lunar lander Aquarius and the command module Odyssey, attached to its service module.

During the previous Apollo 12 landing, NASA had deployed one seismometer on the Moon's surface. The S-IVB impact occurred on April 14, 1970, at 77 hours, 56 minutes after the launch on April 11. The impact occurred 84 miles from that seismic station.


As the weakened Apollo 13 spacecraft cruised away from the Moon, Mission Control radioed the crew with the news. The tired crew was 1900 miles from the Moon.

"By the way, Aquarius, we see the results now from 12's seismometer," Mission Control's Vance Brand radioed Apollo 13 minutes following the impact. "Looks like your booster just hit the Moon, and it's rocking it a little bit. Over."

"Well, at least something worked on this flight," Mission commander James Lovell radioed back from inside the lunar module Aquarius.

LM pilot Fred Haise then added, "I say, I'm sure glad we didn't have a LM impact, too."

As the spacecraft continued to said away from the Moon, Mission Control added new details of the S-IVB impact. It was eight hours following the impact and the crew was about 23,300 miles from the Moon.

"It impacted 74 nautical miles from the ALSEP and the passive seismic detected major seismic activity on all long period channels," Jack Lousma radioed up to Apollo 13s crew. "This activity was detected for four hours afterwards with decreasing amplitude."

"That ought to have them scratching their heads for a while," Haise replied.

(Charles A. Atkeison reports on aerospace and technology. Follow his updates via social media @Military_Flight.)