April 13, 1970: Return to Earth specialist Poppy Northcutt arrives back in Houston after witnessing Apollo 13’s launch two days earlier. At home, she receives a telephone call from ABC News correspondent Jules Bergman. It is the first she learns of the emergency on Apollo 13.

Bergman asks her if there is any way to perform an abort return in the spacecraft’s current position, or whether Apollo 13 will need to do a flyby around the Moon and then return. Northcutt tells him a flyby is the only option.

She then heads over to the MSC and discovers everyone had been trying to reach but didn’t know how to contact her. They hadn’t noticed she had left her name and number on a card under the glass top of the console.

Northcutt remembers it was usually pretty quiet in the SSR1 back room, with very few visitors. But during Apollo 13 that changed. No one in the main Mission Operations Control room wanted to look nervous on the TV camera, so they came into the SSR1 and paced and paced and paced.