Primary mission fails, but over the moon as crew returns safe

It’s amazing how a ticking clock can be used to keep us on the edge of our seats for those few minutes as Apollo 13 loses communication with the ground after it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. This despite knowing that it’s a survival story, not a tragedy, and despite the memory of Ron Howard’s 1995 Tom Hanks-starrer ‘Apollo 13’, the movie that dramatised NASA’s near-disastrous mission to the moon in 1970.

Call it the power of simplicity. It’s the tool director Peter Middleton uses to build up a near-perfect documentary out of a flawed mission. Middleton has re-created the six-day mission through audio recordings, old interviews with the crew and never-seen-before footage of the spacecraft, mission control in Houston and sound bites from astronauts’ families. The reconstruction of the mission is so detailed that one does not need to be a rocket scientist to follow the trajectory. And no, we don’t need talking heads to explain it or contexualise it. One is just glad that Middleton has done away with this trending practice for his documentary. The archival footage does all the talking.

It talks about how Apollo 13, NASA’s fifth flight to the moon, would’ve been the third to land on its surface. But the unlucky number 13 plays its part. The initial launch is delayed by a month. As mission commander Jim Lovell, pilot of the command module Jack Swigert and pilot of the lunar module Ken Mattingly get ready for the launch, Mattingly finds himself exposed to German measles. He is replaced by Fred Haise. Shortly after the launch on April 11, 1970, one of its five engines dies. And soon after comes the dreaded message from Lovell in his calm voice, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” One of the command module’s oxygen tanks has burst.

The explosion after two days and 2,10,000 miles into space jeopardises the three-part spacecraft mission with no oxygen and electricity. The three astronauts spend four harrowing days in a lunar module meant for just two people, with only a few light bulbs’ worth of power. What follows is an intense drama as scientists at the mission centre devise some unprecedented manoeuvres to get them back.

The recordings of two crucial engines exploding into infernos and the scenes from inside the spacecraft, where the astronauts shiver after the systems are shut down to save energy and devise a CO2 filter from cardboard and a sock to save themselves from poisoned air, give goosebumps. The despair, the urgency is conveyed using simple tropes like ‘abort’ and ‘alert’ buttons. And when Lovell looks at the Earth from the orbit and says, “My family, all my friends are on that blue and white Christmas ball, I must get back there”, our heart goes out to him.

The human angle to this hardcore scientific drama comes from Lovell’s wife Marilyn and their children. Surrounded by friends and family and media, they watch news coverage on TV and listen to NASA and Apollo communiques through ‘squawk boxes’.

Middleton has a keen eye for detail. He balances the drama in space with that on the ground as the initial disinterest of the media in yet another moon mission takes a U-turn in the face of an impending tragedy, and the world unites in praying for the crew. Those tense faces from around the world, waiting for the good news, prompt Swigert to say, “Apollo 13 did something that’s never happened before in history — that for a brief instance of time, the whole world was together.” And in that sense, he calls Apollo 13 a successful mission.

Swigert’s statement is debatable, but there is no denial that Middleton’s recreation is successful in making us relive those 1970s’ tense moments. Cut to the present, and a similar tale is playing out, as NASA and Boeing prepare for the un-crewed return of the Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth, leaving behind astronaut Sunita Williams, who was aboard the Starliner, with Butch Wilmore, on the ISS till February 2025.

Will the world once again unite for Williams and Willmore like it did for Lovell, Swigert and Mattingly? Quite doubtful!