Apollo 13 Imaged Far Side’s Tsiolkovskiy Crater During Lunar Flyby

Summary: Apollo 13 imaged the far side’s Tsiolkovskiy Crater during a lunar flyby that passed behind the moon Wednesday, April 15, 1970.

Southeast-looking view toward lunar horizon, photographed April 1970 from the Apollo 13 spacecraft, shows dark-floored, prominent central peaked Tsiolkovskiy Crater pointing into eroded, jumbled Fermi Crater; Litke Crater (top center) lies near Fermi's north-northwestern inner rim; NASA image AS13-60-8659: Project Apollo Archive (Apollo Image Gallery), Public Domain, via Flickr

Apollo 13 imaged the far side’s Tsiolkovskiy Crater during a lunar flyby that coursed behind the moon Wednesday, April 15, 1970, in a circumlunar trajectory intended to maneuver the Apollo 13 spacecraft into a free-return path back to Earth.

Apollo 13 launched Saturday, April 11, 1970, at 19:13 Greenwich Mean Time/Coordinated Universal Time (2:13 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) from the John F. Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39, Pad A, in central Florida’s Cape Canaveral. The Apollo 13 mission lost its goal of landing on the moon, however, after a cryogenic oxygen tank catastrophe occurred in the spacecraft’s Service Module approximately 55 hours 54 minutes after the mission’s launch.

An integral component of the mission’s redesigned flight path called for a circumlunar trajectory to direct the Apollo 13 spacecraft toward a free-return course back to Earth. The Apollo 13 spacecraft’s passage behind the moon lasted for 24 minutes 45 seconds. The spacecraft’s lunar occultation (Latin: occultātiō, “concealment”) began Wednesday, April 15, at 00:21:35 GMT/UTC (Tuesday, April 14, at 7:21 p.m. EST). The crew exited from the lunar far side Wednesday, April 15, at 00:46:10 GMT/UTC (7:46 p.m. EST, Tuesday, April 14), according to the Apollo 13 timeline in freelance space writer Richard W. Orloff’s Apollo by the Numbers, first published by NASA in 2000.

While flying over the moon’s far side, the mission’s Command Module Pilot (CMP) John “Jack” Leonard Swigert Jr. (Aug. 30, 1931-Dec. 27, 1982) and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Fred Wallace Haise Jr. (born Nov. 14, 1933) took photographs of the lunar landscape. Their voyage to the moon turned out to be the only spaceflight for Swigert and Haise.

In the Apollo 13 technical crew debriefing, conducted Friday, April 24, 1970, Commander James Arthur Lovell Jr. (born March 25, 1928) recalled: “I’ll be perfectly frank. I wasn’t interested in photography at the time” (9.0 Lunar Flyby Through 2-Hour Maneuver, page 4). The Apollo 13 mission numbered as Lovell’s fourth and last career spaceflight. His third spaceflight had occurred Saturday, Dec. 21, to Friday, Dec. 27, 1968, as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 8, the first manned mission to reach and orbit the moon.

During their technical debriefing, all three Apollo 13 astronauts complimented the lunar far side’s Tsiolkovskiy Crater. Commander Lovell observed: “Our particular orbit around the Moon brought up Tsiolkovsky very nicely.”

CMP Swigert noted: “Tsiolkovsky stuck out.”

LMP Haise shared: “Yes. That was the first actual landmark I saw on the back side that I recognized” (17.0 Visual Sightings, page 3).

Tsiolkovskiy Crater is centered at minus 20.38 degrees south latitude, 128.97 degrees east longitude, according to the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. The impact crater’s northernmost and southernmost latitudes range from minus 17.34 degrees south to minus 23.42 degrees south, respectively. As an eastern hemisphere crater, its easternmost and westernmost longitudes reach 132.22 degrees east and 125.73 degrees east, respectively. The lunar southern hemisphere crater has a diameter of 184.39 kilometers.

Tsiolkovskiy Crater features a prominent, complex central peak and a smooth, dark-hued, basaltic lava floor. Tsiolkovskiy Crater intrudes into the southeastern rim of neighboring crater Fermi.

Fermi Crater is centered at minus 19.61 degrees south latitude, 123.24 degrees east longitude. As a southern hemisphere crater, Fermi’s northernmost and southernmost latitudes reach minus 15.64 degrees south and minus 23.61 degrees south, respectively. As an eastern hemisphere crater, the eroded crater’s easternmost and westernmost longitudes extend to 127.51 degrees east and 119.07 degrees east, respectively. Fermi’s diameter spans 241.41 kilometers.

Tsiolkovskiy Crater’s namesake is Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and astronautic theory pioneer Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskiy (Sept. 17, 1857-Sept. 19, 1935). The International Astronomical Union officially approved the crater’s name in 1961.

Fermi Crater’s namesake is Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi (Sept. 29, 1901-Nov. 28, 1954). Official approval of the crater’s name was given in 1970. Prior to its formal naming, Fermi Crater was identified as International Astronomical Union Basin V.

The takeaways for Apollo 13’s imaging of the far side’s Tsiolkovskiy Crater during the spacecraft’s lunar flyby Wednesday, April 15, 1970, are that all three Apollo 13 astronauts concurred on the impact’s crater easy recognizability and that the dark-floored, central peaked crater intrudes across the southeastern rim of its battered neighbor, Fermi Crater.

Tsiolkovskiy Crater (green) bites into Fermi Crater (left); small Litke Crater (left) lies within Fermi's north-northwestern rim; to Litke's west-northwest (left), Delaporte Crater stretches across Fermi's northwestern rim: via USGS/IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Southeast-looking view toward lunar horizon, photographed April 1970 from the Apollo 13 spacecraft, shows dark-floored, prominent central peaked Tsiolkovskiy Crater pointing into eroded, jumbled Fermi Crater; Litke Crater (top center) lies near Fermi's north-northwestern inner rim; NASA image AS13-60-8659: Project Apollo Archive (Apollo Image Gallery), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/22022468422/;
Apollo 13 Flight Journal, No copyright asserted, via NASA History @ https://archive.org/details/AS13-60-8659 (image URL);
Apollo 13 Flight Journal, No copyright asserted, via NASA History @ https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap13fj/photos/60-l.html (gallery URL);
NASA, Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/AS13-60-8659;
Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details-as13-60-8659;
NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive @ https://nara.getarchive.net/media/as13-60-8659-apollo-13-apollo-13-mission-image-view-of-the-tsiolkovsky-crater-0a4371

Tsiolkovskiy Crater (green) bites into Fermi Crater (left); small Litke Crater (left) lies within Fermi's north-northwestern rim; to Litke's west-northwest (left), Delaporte Crater stretches across Fermi's northwestern rim: via USGS/IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6108

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