SPACE EXPLORATION TRIUMPHS AND TRAGEDIES Sonya Newland CRABTREE Publishing Company www crabtreebooks com
Early Exploration Disaster in Space Houston we’ve had a problem here The voice of astronaut Jack Swigert crackled through to NASA’s Mission Control in Texas CapCom Jack Lousma asked Swigert to repeat the message His fellow astronaut Commander Jim Lovell took the radio We’ve had a main B bus undervolt he reported Something had gone terribly wrong on board Apollo 13 Mission Control talks to astronaut Fred Haise on the screen during the Apollo 13 mission 4
EARLY EXPLORATION Bring Them Home Two days into their journey to the Moon the astronauts were more than 200,000 miles 322,000 kilometers from Earth They were running out of air and they no longer had enough electricity to get them home It was Mission Control’s job to bring them back alive NASA’s motto is For the Benefit of All NASA is the USA’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration It was set up in 1958 to develop technology that would help people learn more about and travel in space CapCom the person on Earth in charge of talking to astronauts 5
