Announcer: After landing man on the moon in 1969, America's space program in 1970 was a bit of a letdown, if not altogether grim. In 1970, Apollo 13 was to be man’s third landing on the moon.

Though NASA expected their complicated machines would not always work right, the first deaths in the space program still came as a shock -- because the fatal mishap occurred on the ground.

Apollo 13's commander Jim Lovell selects music on a portable tape player while Jack Swigert naps off to the right Image enhancement techniques have been used to reveal life aboard Nasa's stricken ...

NASA has never known anything like it. An explosion hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth; a spacecraft leaking oxygen and losing power; a crew freezing in the darkness, at risk of suffocation.