Apollo 13 Flown Fragment Presentations

After the dramatic Apollo 13 mission the crew wanted to find a way to thank NASA and contractor employees who had worked around the clock to bring them home safely. To this end special presentations were created which included fragments of material flown on the Apollo 13 spacecraft.

The Apollo 13 presentations were created in two main versions, one with a piece of material from the Command Module "Odyssey" and the other with a piece of material from the Lunar Module "Aquarius". A less common alternative version of LM material presentation has also been seen.

All the presentations were usually hand signed by the Apollo 13 crew of James Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise and most were also signed by the Apollo 13 Launch Director Walter J. Kapryan.

An Apollo 13 CM couch fabric presentation card

An Apollo Command Module couch
(looking down towards the seat)

The 5 x 7" presentations entitled 'A Piece of "ODYSSEY" CSM 109' have affixed a roughly one inch square swatch of fabric taken from one the Apollo 13 Command Module crew couches after the flight.

The Apollo Command Module couches were made from a metal frame with fabric slung across to form the back and seat.

After the Apollo 13 flight Lovell petitioned the Smithsonian Institute to allow the crew to have some of the couch material for use in these presentations.

An Apollo 13 LM netting presentation card

The Apollo 13 Lunar Module with some of
the netting visible at upper left

The presentations entitled 'A Piece of "AQUARIUS" LM-7' have affixed a roughly one inch square of netting material.

The netting material was used at strategic locations around the Lunar Module cabin to prevent small objects from floating behind the instrument panels.

The netting material used in the presentations was pulled from the Lunar Module cabin wall by LMP Fred Haise shortly before the spacecraft was jettisoned.

Another style of Apollo 13 LM netting presentation card

Pictured on the left is another style of presentation card entitled 'A PIECE OF "AQUARIUS" LM-7' which has a piece of netting border material affixed.

It's not clear why this different style of presentation was created. One obvious difference is the absence of the Launch Director text and signature but in fact a few of the yellow presentation are also missing this.

What's certain is that this presentation style was produced in smaller numbers than the yellow version as I've only seen a few examples to-date.