Apollo 13’s Fred Haise addresses class

Fred Haise, one of three astronauts on NASA’s legendary Apollo 13 mission, spoke to students and the campus community in Professor James Tour’s class at Duncan Hall April 4. The retired astronaut, who also flew five of the eight space shuttle test missions aboard the Enterprise, told the story of Apollo 13 from his perspective as the only lunar module pilot who did not land on the moon. The story of the mission, which suffered a critical malfunction in a service module tank while en route to the moon, was told in a movie about the mission, but Haise added details about jury-rigging systems to keep life support working and correcting trajectories by eye to keep the astronauts from either burning up or missing Earth entirely on the return trip. He also talked about his subsequent recovery from an airplane crash that left him burned over 60 percent of his body. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow)