When an explosion rocked Apollo 13 's service module on April 13, 1970, the vehicle's vital role, and that of the attached command module spacecraft, suddenly became crystal clear.

Comparison of the damaged service module of Apollo 13. At left, the familiar image. At center: a stack of eight frames of 16mm film. At right, a high resolution scan of the original transparency.

Apollo missions flew unmanned until October 11, 1968, when Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham orbited the earth for ten days in an Apollo command-service module. Apollo 8: Lunar Orbit ...

The Apollo spacecraft, developed by NASA for the legendary Moon missions, was made up of three key components: the Command ...

The command module performed so well that NASA felt confident in making a bold move — sending Apollo 8 all the way around the moon in December. Apollo 9 was an Earth-orbit test of the lunar module.

The service module might have powered the Apollo missions, but it was never meant to return home. Instead, it was the workhorse of the Apollo mission. It gave life to the nerve centre of the ...

The decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous as the mission mode for Apollo meant that two docked spacecraft — the lunar module (LM) and command service module (CSM) — would arrive at the Moon.

Earth rise. NASA Apollo 9 and Apollo 10: Lunar Module Tests The Lunar Module was completed in time for Apollo 9, the first earth orbit test of that equipment.

The command module performed so well that NASA felt confident in making a bold move — sending Apollo 8 all the way around the moon in December. Apollo 9 was an Earth-orbit test of the lunar module.