Friday, April 17th, 1970. This is the closing act of the mission of Apollo 13, NASA's

aborted expedition to the Moon. Four days ago, their spacecraft was crippled by an explosion.

Since then, mission control has battled round the clock just to keep the crew alive. Across

the globe, millions of radios and television sets are tuned in to witness the astronauts'

fate. The world is watching, waiting.

We're now coming to the moment. The last moments of Apollo 13, as it comes in, as it begins

its reentry. The best thing we can do now is just to listen and hope.

The last few seconds down to reentry. At this point there's very little anybody can

do including the astronauts except wait as they come in through the uppermost fringes

of the Earth's atmosphere.

You're coming back from the Moon at 35,000 feet per shot. That is how on the mail. And

you gotta do it just right. The computers put them on course. All anybody can do now is

cross their fingers.

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. This is the final moment of truth. Everything now hangs on the capsule's

heat shields and the hope that it can protect them from the fire of reentry.

Apollo control, Houston. We've just had lots of signal from Honey Circle.

And they've lost them on the main radio contact antenna in Australia at Honey Circle 2.

Sleep deprived and at the end of their tether, astronauts gym level, Fred Hayes and Jack

Swigard, are caged inside their capsule, hurtling through the scorching atmosphere, watching

the flicker of inferno through their windows. The fierce heat of reentry charges the

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