The Problem

The third attempted lunar landing had run into a variety of problems.  An oxygen tank built inside the service module had cracked wires which caused an explosion at fifty-five hours, fifty-four minutes, and fifty-three seconds into the mission.  The command module (Odyssey) had lost all electrical power, and the crew was forced to use the lunar module (Aquarius) as a life boat for four days.  Throughout the four days, the crew had run into problems such as Carbon dioxide filling the lunar module.  Because the crew had not landed on the moon, that caused the space ship to drift off course because they didn't have rocks, so the ship was underweight.  During the end of their flight, they had jettisoned their service module and had discovered that one whole side of the spacecraft had been blown off and could have damaged their heat sheild.