Lunar Flag Assembly flag, placed about from the centerline of the "Eagle" landing craft, was blown over by the blast of the rocket exhaust during takeoff. Because of this, care was taken by subsequent crews to place the flags at greater distances from the Lunar Module. The landing on Apollo 13 was aborted due to a major spacecraft malfunction encountered before reaching the Moon. The flag carried on that flight was destroyed with the Lunar Module "Aquarius" when it reentered the Earth's atmosphere. A review of photographs taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) indicates that flags placed during the Apollo 12, Apollo
Apollo 21 21" lunar landing mission appears in three twenty-first-century works of fiction. The Apollo program used a Saturn V to launch the first manned test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, consisting of the Apollo Command/Service Module and a separate Apollo Lunar Module landing craft in a low Earth orbit, on the Apollo 9 mission. However, the original plan for this test would have used two launches of the smaller Saturn IB Earth-orbital launch vehicle: the first would launch the crew in the Command/Service Module, followed shortly by a second, unmanned launch of the Lunar Module, with which the crew would rendezvous