Daily Mirror 18 April 1970

Daily Mirror 18 April 1970

This Daily Mirror Newspaper from 18 April 1970 has the headline, “Thank God!” referring to the safe return to Earth of the crew of Apollo 13. The image on the front page shows Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert with their heads bowed, listening to a prayer on the recovery ship. The story continues inside and on the back page. It recounts details of the mission and the reactions of the astronauts’ families after their safe return.

After a spacecraft malfunction on the journey to the Moon, Apollo 13 aborted plans to land – and instead it became a race against time to find a new flight plan that could safely return the crew to Earth. Until this point, Apollo 13 had not gained the same media attention as the previous Moon landing missions. None of the major television networks broadcast the crew’s live message to Earth from the spacecraft. However, when disaster struct the story became global news.

The Apollo 13 capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on 17 April 1970 and the crew became international heroes. The mission became known as a ‘Successful Failure,’ because the round the clock effort of Mission Control to figure out how to bring the crew home safely was arguably one of NASA’s greatest achievements.