WEBVTT FILE

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I’m Ernie Wright. I work in the

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Scientific Visualization Studio. My producer, David Ladd, and I made this video

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for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13.

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So, Apollo 13 is pretty famously the moon mission where the

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oxygen tank explodes and the astronauts have to use the lunar module

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as a lifeboat. I’m a big fan of the Tom Hanks movie, but

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I wanted to do something that people hadn’t seen before.

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Something that Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data uniquely allows us to do.

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To show what the crew saw as they flew around

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the far side of the moon. They arrive at the moon

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about a day after the explosion. They’ve been put on a free return

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trajectory that will sort of slingshot them around the moon and send them

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home. I found just enough data in the old

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Apollo documents to reconstruct their flight path. I put the virtual

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camera on that path, and I pointed it at the things they took pictures

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of using the same lenses they had on board.

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So, you see like they saw: Tsiolkovskiy Crater

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and Mare Moscoviense and the Lunar Highlands. By the

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way, a lot of the major features on the far side were named by the

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Soviet Union because they were the first to photograph it in 1959.

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I made almost

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15 minutes of this stuff. David cut it together in a way

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that found the emotional beats of this part of the journey.

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The astronauts were behind the moon for almost half an hour, completely out

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of contact with the Earth. And you can just imagine what it felt

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like to see the Earth again, reestablish radio contact,

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and know that they were finally heading home.

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It took them almost three more days before they finally splashed down.

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The timing of the explosion was actually fortunate in a way.

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If it had happened during or after the moon landing, there wouldn’t have been

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a lunar module to serve as a lifeboat. And if it was earlier, they might

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not have had enough power, air and water to make it all the way back.

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Thanks for watching.

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