Page 10 - On Screen Leaflet

Look at the pictures and the

title of the text. What do you

think the text is about?

1

• crew • manned mission • explosion

• plot • survival • doomed • landing

• lift-off • bang • flash • trail

• oxygen tank • leaking • meteor

• no time to lose • command module

• lunar module • lifeboat • enclosed

• cope with disaster • carbon dioxide

• re-enter • splash down • adapter

• go down in history

Check these words

lunar module (LM):

a separate

spaceship designed to land on

the Moon

command module (CM):

control

centre & living quarters for crew

Was it doomed from the beginning? The scientists at Houston were

in

charge of

getting the spacecraft to the Moon and back. They had

scheduled

the April 1970 lift-off for thirteen minutes after the thirteenth hour. They had

also planned the moon landing itself for the thirteenth day of the month. For

those who believe in bad luck, perhaps the only thing missing was a Friday.

Scientists aren’t supposed to be

superstitious

, though, and

despite

minor

problems on lift-off, Apollo 13 started its journey.

Two days into the mission, the three-man crew faced

catastrophe

. They

had been

carrying out

routine checks when there was a loud bang. Warning

lights were starting to flash furiously. Looking out into space, they could see a

trail of gas – the spacecraft was leaking oxygen. They sent out a short message

to the scientists back on Earth: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” At first,

they thought that a meteor had hit them, but they later found out that a short

circuit had caused an oxygen tank to

explode

. Whatever the cause, they knew

there was no time to lose. Their electricity supply in the command module

depended

on that oxygen and pretty soon they would run out of both.

A

B

200,000 miles from Earth, the crew of the third manned mission to the Moon

faced an astronaut’s worst nightmare: an explosion on the spacecraft.

It’s the plot of the Oscar-winning film

Apollo 13

, but it’s also a true story

of survival against the odds.

a) Check these words/phrases in the Word List at the

back of the book. Use them to complete the sentences.

• meteor • lift-off • re-enter • manned • leaking

• landing • carbon dioxide

1

Apollo 13, with a crew of three people, was the third

...................... mission to the Moon.

2

There were some problems during the ...........................

even before the spacecraft got into space.

3

They noticed the spacecraft was ...................... gas into

space.

4

They thought a ...................... had hit the spacecraft.

5

The air in the lunar module contained ........................... .

6

The lunar module managed to ...................... Earth’s

atmosphere without ...................... on the Moon.

b) What do you know about Apollo 13? What do the

sentences in Ex. 2a tell us about it?

Listen, read and check.

2

Reading

2

a

22

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