"Houston, We've Had a Problem"

So goes the often misquoted announcement by Jack Swigert after one of the spacecraft's oxygen tanks ruptured during the Apollo 13 mission.  The ultimate cause of the rupture was determined to be a fairly lengthy chain of unlikely events.  This is detailed in the NASA report from July 1970, titled Apollo 13 Cryogenic Oxygen Tank 2 Anomaly: Anomaly Report No. 1. Shown here is an onboard camera image of the tank area after the rupture. This report as well as the mission plan and final report for Apollo 13 can be found in the papers of Richard Allenby, Dartmouth class of 1944.

In addition to the Apollo 13 mission, Allenby's papers contain photographs, illustrations, technical reports, professional correspondence, mission reports, and official programs from the NASA manned Space Programs Gemini III, IV, V, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, Mercury, and Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

Among the many images in the collection is one of President Richard Nixon exchanging "OK" signs with the members of the Apollo 11 mission.  Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were the first astronauts to land on the moon and were placed in quarantine aboard the USS Hornet after they returned to earth to minimize the possibility of contamination by unknown pathogens from the moon.

Ask for MS-1024 to see these items and many more.  A finding aid for the collection is available.