You're 180,000 miles from Earth when a shuddering bang rips through your spacecraft, the power starts dying, and you watch your oxygen vent silently into the void. There is no pulling over. This is the real-time fight for survival that became NASA's finest hour.

Using NASA's declassified mission logs, crew accounts, and engineering teardowns, this episode reconstructs how Apollo 13 turned from humanity's third moon landing into a desperate rescue in April 1970. It's a master class in crisis management, human endurance, and the kind of improvisation no manual could have prepared anyone for, plus the chilling chain of tiny errors that nearly killed three astronauts.

• How a last-minute crew swap put Jack Swigert aboard just 38 hours before launch after Ken Mattingly was exposed to German measles
• The cause of the explosion tra ...