"Houston We’ve Had a Problem” (feat. Captain Jim Lovell)

Summary

HISTORY This Week: "Houston We’ve Had a Problem” (feat. Captain Jim Lovell)
Release Date: April 14, 2025
Host/Author: The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

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Introduction: The Apollo 13 Crisis

In the episode titled "Houston We’ve Had a Problem," HISTORY This Week delves into the harrowing yet triumphant tale of the Apollo 13 mission. Hosted by Sally Helm, the episode features firsthand accounts from Captain Jim Lovell, one of NASA's most esteemed astronauts. The narrative captures the intensity of the mission, the unforeseen challenges faced by the crew, and the extraordinary teamwork that ensured their safe return.

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Jim Lovell: From Dreams to Space

Timestamp [03:10]

Jim Lovell reflects on his journey to becoming an astronaut:

Jim Lovell: "Well, my name of course is Captain Jim Lovell. I was on Apollo 13."

Lovell's passion for space began in his childhood during the 1940s, a period when space exploration was a novel concept. Unable to afford college despite aspirations to study rocket science, Lovell joined the Navy and became a pilot. His persistence paid off when NASA sought military pilots for their astronaut program. Initially, Lovell faced setbacks, including failing a physical due to high bilirubin levels, but he secured a second chance by concealing this information from NASA, ultimately passing the physical and embarking on his storied space career.

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The Apollo Program: Building to the Moon

Timestamp [05:04] – [09:04]

Lovell participated in several key missions, including a two-week spaceflight to test human endurance in zero gravity and preparatory missions leading up to Apollo 13. The Apollo program faced tragedies, such as the Apollo 1 fire, but persevered toward President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon. By Apollo 13, Lovell was appointed commander, leading a three-man crew aboard the spacecraft named Odyssey and the lunar module Aquarius.

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Launch and Initial Success

Timestamp [11:37] – [15:01]

Apollo 13 launched smoothly at 13:13 on April 11, 1970. Lovell, confident from his previous spaceflights, felt prepared as the mission aimed to explore a geologically rich area on the moon. The crew conducted routine checks and maneuvers, including a critical free return trajectory maneuver that would later play a pivotal role in their survival.

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The Crisis: Explosion and Its Aftermath

Timestamp [15:18] – [17:16]

During a routine stir of the cryo tanks to maintain oxygen levels and generate power, an explosion rocked the spacecraft:

Jim Lovell [16:41]: "I'm losing all my oxygen. One of the tanks must have exploded somehow. We had to do something."

This critical failure forced the crew to abort their lunar landing and repurpose the lunar module as a lifeboat. With limited oxygen, power, and resources, Lovell and his team faced the daunting challenge of navigating back to Earth without the usual support systems.

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Mission Control: Ingenuity Under Pressure

Timestamp [20:16] – [24:08]

Back on Earth, Mission Control in Houston orchestrated a rescue operation. Engineers and scientists devised makeshift solutions to fit square carbon dioxide canisters into the lunar module's round ports using available materials:

Jim Lovell: "Hose, duct tape, and an old sock. And by gosh, that was the one thing that kept us from dying."

This ingenuity was crucial in sustaining the crew's life support systems. Additionally, the team worked tirelessly to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory, ensuring they remained on a path to return safely.

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Navigating Through Adversity: Steering the Ship

Timestamp [19:07] – [27:18]

With the command module compromised, Lovell manually steered Aquarius using a sextant for celestial navigation, a technique akin to that used by ancient sea captains. Despite floating debris from the explosion complicating sightings, Lovell successfully realigned the spacecraft onto a free return trajectory.

Jim Lovell: "We were superstitious, this is the spacecraft for you. Because all sorts of little things happened on 13 that you wouldn't think possible. But it did."

As they looped around the moon, the crew encountered another critical issue: rising carbon dioxide levels. The lunar module's life support systems were inadequate for three men over four days. The team devised a solution by adapting command module filters to fit the lunar module's ports, ensuring breathable air for the astronauts.

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Reentry and Safe Splashdown

Timestamp [27:37] – [29:04]

With limited resources and precise calculations, the Apollo 13 crew began reentry procedures. The communication blackout during reentry was prolonged due to an unexpected ionization shell around the spacecraft caused by the damaged heat shield.

Jim Lovell: "The heat shield starts flaking off and flames. And it forms a sphere of gas around the spacecraft that prevents communication."

Despite these challenges, the crew successfully reentered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, being retrieved by the USS Iwo Jima. The mission, though it did not achieve its original objective of landing on the moon, became a testament to human resilience and problem-solving under extreme pressure.

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Reflections and Legacy

Timestamp [30:02] – [30:44]

Captain Lovell shared profound insights on the mission's significance:

Jim Lovell: "The best thing that could have happened to NASA was for 13 to have the explosion. It showed what could be done in cooperation and good leadership and teamwork to work together in a bad situation."

Apollo 13 not only ensured the safety of its crew but also revitalized public interest in NASA's Apollo program, highlighting the importance of teamwork and ingenuity in overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

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Conclusion: A Milestone in Space Exploration

The "Houston We’ve Had a Problem” episode encapsulates the dramatic events of Apollo 13, offering listeners an in-depth look at the mission's challenges and the heroic efforts of both the astronauts and Mission Control. Through Jim Lovell's candid recounting, the episode underscores the enduring human spirit and the collaborative prowess that turned a potential tragedy into a historic victory.

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Production Credits:
Produced by McCamey, Lynn, Julie Magruder, Ben Dickstein, and Sally Helm. Edited and designed by Dan Rosado with research by Emma Fredericks. Executive produced by Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Special thanks to John Urie, NASA scientist and historian.

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Transcript

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Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for distinguished journalism, books, drama and music.

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There was disbelief and pride and life changing.

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My name is Nicole Carroll and I'm a member of the Pulitzer Board and host of Pulitzer on the Road, the official podcast of the Pulitzer Prizes. In each episode, winners reveal how much labor and risk, heart and imagination go into creating their prize winning work. We'll talk with novelists and reporters.

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[Sally Helm]

History this week, April 14, 1970 I'm Sally Helm.

[Jack Swigert]

Okay? Yes sir.

[Jim Lovell]

We've had a problem here.

[Sally Helm]

A quarter of a million miles away from Earth, there's been an explosion. Three astronauts are floating around in the cabin of their spacecraft trying desperately to figure out what just happened. Why are we losing oxygen so fast? Can we fix this? The ship is Apollo 13 and its crew ends up pulling off the narrowest escape in the history of space travel. There's even a famous movie about it. Everything went wrong and they still made it back alive. So how exactly did Captain Jim Lovell and his crew fly a broken half functioning craft back to Earth? We found the perfect person to ask.

[Jim Lovell]

Well, my name of course is Captain Jim Lovell. I was on Apollo 13.

[Sally Helm]

Today we asked Jim Lovell to relive the 143 hours he spent dealing with the crisis and how he and his crew stayed alive when everything around them seemed to be falling apart. What Is the science of saving a spaceship. I lost you for a sec. Are you there?

[Jim Lovell]

Hello?

[Sally Helm]

Hi, I'm there. Can you hear me?

[Jim Lovell]

Go ahead.

[Sally Helm]

Great. We reached Captain Lovell at his home in Illinois. The connection wasn't perfect. Apologies for the sometimes not great audio. Jim Lovell is one of the most famous astronauts of all time.

[Jack Swigert]

Commander Jim Lovell reporting. Shut down. The engine is off. We're at 79 hours, 32 minutes into the flight.

[Sally Helm]

He was made even more famous when Tom Hanks played him in the movie Apollo 13. He set his sights on outer space when he was just a kid, which in the 1940s was pretty novel. When he was graduating from high school, he wrote a letter to the American Rocket Society asking what's the best way for me to get a job building rockets.

[Jim Lovell]

They suggested going to MIT or Caltech. Well, I couldn't afford to go to college.

[Sally Helm]

So instead he joined the Navy and became a pilot. And a few years later, this new governmental agency, NASA, comes knocking. They're looking for military pilots who might make good astronauts. And Jim Lovell gets called in to try out. He has to take a physical.

[Jim Lovell]

I was One of the 32 people accepted to go to the physical. I was the only guy to flunk. And I think the doctors couldn't feel comfortable passing everybody, so they had to flung somebody.

[Sally Helm]

He had high bilirubin levels in his blood, which is generally harmless on its own, but it was enough to flunk the physical. For a kid who grew up dreaming of rockets, this was a crushing blow. But then Lovell gets a second chance. NASA comes calling again looking for pilots.

[Jim Lovell]

They didn't know that I flunked a physical and I wasn't going to tell them. And I said sure. And the doctors there didn't even know what a high bill of Rubin was. And I passed, no problem.

[Sally Helm]

Before long, he's going to space. During this time, Lovell is kind of one of NASA's guinea pigs. He goes on a two week mission because that's how long it would take to go to the moon and back. NASA wants to see if a human being can survive 14 days in zero gravity. So Lovell floats around for two weeks and helps NASA figure out, yes, it can be done. Then he flies on another mission trying.

[Jim Lovell]

To figure out how it's possible to work outside the spacecraft while you're in orbit.

[Sally Helm]

And then we choose to go to.

[Jim Lovell]

The moon in this decade and do.

[Jack Swigert]

The other things, not because they are.

[Jim Lovell]

Easy, but because they are hard.

[Sally Helm]

President Kennedy says he wants to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. So the Apollo program kicks into gear. The first mission, Apollo 1, ends in tragedy. There's a fire on the spacecraft during a test flight. The entire crew is killed. But the Apollo program continues slowly building up the expertise they'll need for a moon landing. And by the time Apollo 8 comes around, Jim Lovell is in the pilot seat. He and his crew are going to try to orbit the moon for the first time.

[Jim Lovell]

Complete darkness when we got to the moon and suddenly as we started to do the orbiting, we looked out and the sunlight started to come around to the far side. It lit up the tops of the craters. And then pretty soon the sunlight made the entire far side of the moon, the side that we never see from the earth.

[Sally Helm]

Of course, Lovell and the crew of Apollo 8 are the first people ever to set eyes on the far side of the moon. He spots a mountain on the moon's surface and names it Mount Maryland, after his wife.

[Jim Lovell]

We were like three schoolboys looking at that. At the time it looked like a grand oasis in the vastness of space.

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

A few years later, when the Apollo 11 mission finally lands on the moon, Jim Lovell is watching from Earth. He was Neil Armstrong's backup. Then comes Apollo 12, which is sort of the forgotten middle child of the Apollo missions. And then came lucky number 13. The mission here was to land on the moon's surface and do some scientific research, collect some geological samples that might help them figure out the origins of the moon. This time Lovell is the commander.

[Jim Lovell]

You can imagine being a kid that was interested in space flight, rockets and all that. This is sort of the epitome of my career. What else could I want?

[Sally Helm]

By the time they got to 13, NASA had the plan locked down. There would be a three man crew. Commander Lovell, he's in charge. And then two pilots, Ken Mattingly and Fred Haise. The spacecraft itself was very similar to the ones from Apollos 11 and 12. It had three main parts. They'll become important later. There was the command module where the crew would do most of their navigation, and the service module which had lots of equipment and support systems in it. Together those two parts were named Odyssey. And then there was the lunar module named Aquarius. That was the part of the ship that Lovell and Hayes were going to ride down to the moon's surface. The team works together for months preparing for the mission. Things are going well, but then if.

[Jim Lovell]

You'Re superstitious, this is the spacecraft for you. Because all sorts of little things happened on 13 that you wouldn't think possible. But it did.

[Sally Helm]

So what? Like what?

[Jim Lovell]

Well, first of all, we were getting ready to go and the crew, just a few days before the flight was exposed to the measles.

[Sally Helm]

The measles? Lovell and Haise have both already had the measles, so they're safe. But Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot, he never had it as a kid. And NASA decides they have to bring in a replacement.

[Jim Lovell]

Just a couple days before the flight. The three of us had to sit down and spend hours after hours just getting Jack up to speed.

[Sally Helm]

As the command module pilot, Jack Swigert, he's going to be piloting the spacecraft from Earth to the moon when the day comes. He's ready. Everything is ready.

[Jack Swigert]

3, 2, 1, 0. And we have liftoff at 2:13.

[Sally Helm]

Apollo 13 blasts off at 13:13 without a hitch.

[Jim Lovell]

This is my fourth flight into space, so I am not really nervous because this was old hat to me.

[Sally Helm]

But as they're still exiting the Earth's atmosphere, something strange happens. One of the five engines on the ship suddenly shuts down. The astronauts can't figure out why, so they call down to mission Control in Houston. Mission Control is plugged into everything happening on the ship.

[Jack Swigert]

Jim. Houston, we don't have a story on why the inboard out was early, but the other engines are go and here go. Roger.

[Jim Lovell]

So we breathed a sigh of relief and I told my companions, I said, you know, almost every flight has something go wrong with it, that this was our thing that went wrong with it. And I think we're still okay. We all breathe in sigh of relief, but the bad things have been behind us.

[Sally Helm]

They had good reason to hope the worst was behind them, because the next thing they're going to do is something NASA has Never tried before. Apollos 11 and 12 landed on the moon, but they didn't go anywhere very geologically interesting. Apollo 13 though, is trying to land in a different place, one that's more geologically rich.

[Jim Lovell]

But to land at the proper spot, we got off the free return course to another course.

[Sally Helm]

Okay, free return course to explain this, first, remember that when something pushes off in space, it just keeps going in that direction. There's no wind or friction, so objects keep moving on whatever path they're on. And there's one particular path they can take that makes getting home much easier. If they blast off towards the moon at a specific angle, then they'll end up getting caught in the moon's orbit. And they can use that orbit to slingshot them around the moon and back towards Earth without having to use any extra fuel. Free trip home is kind of amazing. Apollos 11 and 12 both took the free return course the whole way, but 13 can't because they're landing in a different place in the Moon's northern hemisphere, a place called Fra Moro. So early on in the trip, they fire their rockets, pushing the ship onto a slightly different trajectory. Now they're heading towards their destination. But if something goes wrong, there is no free ride back to Earth. About a day after liftoff, this maneuver is all done. And the crew has the closest thing they're going to get to downtime.

[Jack Swigert]

Hello, Houston. Apollo 13. 13 Houston, go ahead. We're having lunch right now and just made myself a hot dog sandwich with ketchup. Very tasty. That's correct, thirteen. As I recall the flight plan, you're supposed to put mustard on the hot dogs and not ketchup. But I guess we'll overlook that.

[Sally Helm]

Things are obviously going smoothly. On the morning of day three, Houston asked the crew to do a routine check.

[Jack Swigert]

Thirteen, we've got one more item for you when you get a chance. We'd like it to stir up your cryo tanks. Okay, stand by.

[Sally Helm]

Those cryo tanks are full of oxygen, which the astronauts need to breathe, obviously, but it's also used for fuel. It gets mixed with hydrogen, and that creates electricity to power the ship so that they can get home. It also creates water that the crew will drink. So Jack Swigert starts stirring the cryo tanks.

[Jim Lovell]

At that particular time, Fred Haise and I were at the lunar module, and I was coming back down through the tunnel. When suddenly the bang occurred. I couldn't figure out what that was. There was sort of a sharp bang, and things rocked back and forth for a while. I looked up at Fred A's to see if he knew what caused the noise. And I could tell from his expression he had no idea. And then I looked down at Jack Swigert in the command module. His eyes were as wide as saucers. He had no idea. And I could see that this was the start of a long journey home.

[Jack Swigert]

Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. This is Houston. Say again, please. Houston, we've had a problem.

[Sally Helm]

The instruments on the spacecraft are going crazy, alarms sounding, warning lights flashing, and the pressure on the oxygen tank is plummeting. And then Captain Lovell looks out the window.

[Jim Lovell]

And I looked out on the side, and I could see a flying spray, V shaped, spraying out into space. And at a really high rate of speed, it seemed to me. And of course, that answered the question.

[Sally Helm]

He knows what this is.

[Jim Lovell]

I'm losing all my oxygen. One of the tanks must have exploded somehow. We had to do something.

[Sally Helm]

Fairly soon, he realizes they aren't going to land on the moon. And if they don't act fast, they're not going to make it home.

[Jim Lovell]

The answer was obvious. We'd have to use the lunar module as a lifeboat, somehow, some way to get home.

[Sally Helm]

They had to get out of the dying command module and get into the lunar module to survive. They've never trained for this situation, but they have to figure it out.

[Jim Lovell]

We weren't prepared for the simulations that we had. It had never been designed to try to get back to the earth. One of the first things we had to do was to transfer information in the guidance system to the lunar module. That was a little bit of arithmetic work to do that.

[Sally Helm]

There's all this information on the command module computers that they need on the computers in the lunar module. Frustratingly, those two computers used different coordinate systems. So Lovell has to translate the data by hand While his ship is literally breaking down around him. He does these calculations and puts the results into the computer one by one. Once he's done that, they have to shut down the command module computers as quickly as possible to save power.

[Jim Lovell]

We had to be very careful about what we were using and had to shut off things that we didn't think were required.

[Sally Helm]

They don't even turn on the emergency warning system. They'll have to rely on mission control to tell them if something else goes wrong. Within a couple of hours, they're hunkered down in the lunar module, still on course for that remote spot on the moon.

[Jack Swigert]

We're going to plan to make a free return. So how do you feel about making a 16 foot per second burn in 37 minutes? Well, we'll give it a try, Jack, if that's all we got.

[Sally Helm]

They need to get back on the free return trajectory. The free trip home. Fuel is really scarce at this point, so they need all the help they can get. But when Captain Lovell tries to steer the spaceship from the lunar module, it.

[Jim Lovell]

Was somewhat like if you're driving a car down the road and you want to go right, you turn the wheel left. And of course, it dawned on me at that time, Attached to the lunar module was a 60,000 pound dead mass, the command service module.

[Sally Helm]

The ship was never designed to be steered from the lunar module, Especially with the rest of the ship still attached. Not only that, but with the guidance systems powered down, Lovell needs to navigate by the stars. He uses a tool kind of like the ones that old sea captains would a sextant, which is a special sort of telescope. He can use it to look at the stars and figure out his position. The problem is the accident has left debris floating around outside, Little pieces of foil from the ship's exterior.

[Jim Lovell]

So when I looked outside the windows, I saw not only, you know, the stars, but I saw also all this other debris hanging out. It's hard to figure out what's a star and what's a piece of oil?

[Sally Helm]

They're moving at thousands of miles an hour, but there's no gravity, so the debris just hangs there. Lovell has to figure out his position using only the sun, the moon, and the Earth. Those are the only three objects that he can see clearly. Finally, he makes his move.

[Jack Swigert]

We got it.

[Sally Helm]

The ship is back on the free return trajectory. Soon they begin to loop around the moon. This is Captain Lovell's second trip back through this particular patch of space, and this time is different.

[Jim Lovell]

I didn't pay much attention to the moon on the second round like the first time. But I had plenty of time as we orbited the moon on Apollo 8 to look at it.

[Sally Helm]

He does glance down for just a second to see one important landmark, the mountain he named after his wife on his last trip around the moon.

[Jim Lovell]

Looking down, I could see it as we passed it by Mount Maryland.

[Sally Helm]

As the crew floats along in the lunar module, there is a problem building up.

[Jim Lovell]

Literally a light had come on in the lunar module, a little orange light, which essentially said that the carbon dioxide volume has built it up into a dangerous amount.

[Sally Helm]

The crew is breathing in their precious supply of oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide. CO2 is toxic, and ultimately CO2 overload is fatal. There are these canisters that are supposed to absorb the excess CO2, but the ones on the lunar module are wearing out. The lunar module is designed to hold two men for two days, not three men for four days. There are other canisters on the command module, but they aren't the same shape. The command module's canisters are square. The lunar module's are round. So command module filters won't fit in the round ports on the lunar module.

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

Down on the ground, mission control gets to work. You may remember this if you've seen the movie. All those spare parts poured out onto a table. They have to figure out, how do we get these square canisters to fit into these round holes? Using only the materials that are already.

[Jim Lovell]

On board, they worked out a system and then they relayed it up to us word by word. Hose, duct tape, and an old sock. And by gosh, that was the one thing that kept us from dying.

[Sally Helm]

When the astronauts make it around the moon, they fire their engines one more time, burning precious fuel. This speeds up the ship while they slingshot out of orbit. Burning the rockets for five minutes will save them 10 hours on their trip, which is crucial because they're running low on water. They cut their consumption by half. Each of them gets six ounces a day, and they're not eating much.

[Jim Lovell]

We really didn't care about food in our condition. I mean, you could go without food for a long time.

[Sally Helm]

Lovell loses £14 on the trip. Hayes gets sick, and it's cold. They've shut off the heat to conserve power. So it's 38 degrees Fahrenheit inside the ship. Two days after they leave the moon's orbit, they're getting close to Earth as.

[Jim Lovell]

We were on our way home. Of course, the Earth was getting bigger and bigger. And mission control told us that they would give us procedures for powering up the command module, which was the only device that was gonna enter the atmospher.

[Sally Helm]

Reentry into the atmosphere is one of the most dangerous parts of any mission. You're going really fast, creating tons of heat. There's a heat shield on the command module that's supposed to protect them, but the crew had no idea whether it had been damaged in the explosion. Also, they have to get the angle of entry just right. Too shallow, you bounce off the Earth's atmosphere. A NASA scientist we talked to said it's like a stone skipping on water, but too steep and you cause too much friction, incinerating the ship. Plus, the Apollo 13 crew has to lose the lunar module. And get all the command module systems back online. So Mission Control is working crazy hours on the ground. Getting the instructions ready.

[Jim Lovell]

But they kept delaying and delaying and delaying. Finally, I got kind of mad and said, you know, we gotta have those.

[Sally Helm]

Procedures 17 hours before splashdown. They get their instructions. A familiar voice comes on the radio to read them.

[Jack Swigert]

Hello, Aquarius, Houston. How do you read? Okay. Very good, Ken. Okay, let me take it from the top here.

[Sally Helm]

Ken Mattingly, the astronaut who had to sit the mission out in case he got the measles. By the way, he never got sick. It's not just Ken. A bunch of people from Mission Control came up with this plan, and they're all chiming in. It takes more than three hours to read off all the instructions. But finally.

[Jack Swigert]

Houston, Aquarius, Jack's entering the command module now. Okay, Jim.

[Sally Helm]

The crew leaves their lunar module lifeboat. They power up the command module. They eject the service module. And when they do, they can see the damage from the explosion for the first time.

[Jack Swigert]

And there's one whole side of that spacecraft missing.

[Sally Helm]

They'll later find out that the blast was caused by one little faulty wire that shorted out and sparked an explosion.

[Jack Swigert]

The whole panel is blown out almost from the base to the engine.

[Sally Helm]

Now there's nothing to do but wait. Hope the heat shield isn't damaged. Hope the parachutes they'll need haven't frozen into blocks of ice. They hit the atmosphere in a roar of fire.

[Jim Lovell]

The heat shield starts flaking off and flames. And it forms a sphere of gas around the spacecraft that prevents communication.

[Sally Helm]

This is the. The way it usually works. But on Apollo 13, this ionization goes on longer than normal. The communication blackout is supposed to last three or four minutes.

[Jim Lovell]

Mission Control started calling us and calling us. And of course, we didn't hear them. And we tried to call them, and they couldn't hear us. They weren't really too sure whether we're on the right course. Or we're just burning up through the atmosphere.

[Sally Helm]

Four minutes go by. Then five, then six.

[Jack Swigert]

Extremely loud applause of Apollo 13 on the main chute. Comes through loud and clear on the television display here.

[Sally Helm]

The parachute did not freeze. The heat shield was not damaged. And the astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean. They get picked up by a Navy ship, the USS Iwo Jima. It's not until they're on board that they realize their trip has been big news.

[Jim Lovell]

Well, we're very happy that people thought about us when we got home. I was hoping that someone would think about us besides our family.

[Sally Helm]

In fact, the whole world has been waiting to hear whether these three astronauts would make it home. Apollo 13 ends up rejuvenating the public's interest in the Apollo program as a whole. Captain Lovell told us if he could go back and prevent the explosion and walk on the moon, he wouldn't.

[Jim Lovell]

The best thing that could have happened to NASA was for 13 to have the explosion. It showed what could be done in cooperation and good leadership and teamwork to work together on a bad situation. So in that respect, it probably is a milestone to young people that can say that, hey, if I run into a problem, what I need to do is to sit back and figure things out to see how best I can overcome them.

[Sally Helm]

Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on History today. This podcast is produced by McCamey, Lynn, Julie Magruder, Ben Dickstein and me, Sally Helm. Our editor and sound designer is Dan Rosado and our researcher is Emma Fredericks. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Thanks today to John Urie, a NASA scientist and historian who walked us through this whole story. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week.