HOUSTON, April 19 - Actor Tom Hanks made them famous in his 1995 movie Apollo 13 and today the NASA engineers who improvised an air filter that kept astronauts alive on the ill-fated mission 35 years ago finally got an award for their work.
Engineering search engine firm GlobalSpec Inc presented the now-retired Ed Smylie and his NASA Crew Services Division with a ``great moments in engineering’’ award for the air scrubber they fashioned from cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape to clean carbon dioxide from the crippled spacecraft’s air.
The fix became necessary after a short circuit blew up an oxygen tank and prompted the famous line from mission commander Jim Lovell: ``Houston, we have a problem.’’
When the tank blew in the April 1970 flight, Smylie and his crew went to work at Johnson Space Centre to develop the filter using items they knew were on the spacecraft that was hurtling toward the moon.
After hours on the task, they came up with a system that the astronauts then put together with radioed instruction from the engineers.
This award and the event it recognises, epitomises the crew systems division's history of rising to challenges - challenges that required immediate time critical response as well as those require sustained effort over months or years,'' a proud Smylie said at Space Centre Houston, the tourist centre for JSC. Former astronaut Fred Haise Jr, who was lunar module pilot on Apollo 13, praised Smylie's team for saving the space crew, which included the late Jack Swigert. Had they not developed the air scrubber, the astronauts would have run out of air before they could turn their limping spacecraft around and get back to Earth. The issue involving carbon dioxide on that flight was a show stopper for us,’’ Haise said.
``But crew systems division found a way to fix it. That’s why I’m able to be here today and thank them.’’
NASA has come under much criticism since the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated and fell to earth on February 1, 2003 and Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff in 1986.