Imagine being far from Earth when an important part of your spacecraft suddenly explodes. There is no hospital, repair shop or rescue team nearby. You only have the equipment inside your spacecraft and a team of experts speaking to you from Earth. This was the situation for the three astronauts of Apollo 13. The spacecraft left Earth on 11 April 1970. The crew included James Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. Their plan was to travel to the Moon. Lovell and Haise were going to walk on its surface, while Swigert stayed in the command module, called Odyssey. For the first two days, the mission went quite well. However, on 13 April, an oxygen tank in the service module exploded. At that time, Apollo 13 was about 320,000 kilometres from Earth. The explosion damaged the spacecraft. Oxygen was escaping into…