The backside of the moon during the slingshot pass of the spacecraft in distress, 11-17 April 1970

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1970, numbered "NASA AS13-60-8659" (NASA MSC) in red in top margin, with "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 25,4 x 20,3 cm

While surviving in their “lifeboat” LM during their single pass around the Moon more than 240,000 nautical miles away from their Home Planet, the Apollo 13 astronauts took this astonishing photograph through the 250mm telephoto lens looking southeast toward a great expanse of the lunar farside centered over Crater Tsiolkovsky, not knowing whether they would ever return but knowing for sure that they would not land on the Moon. The 180-km Crater Tsiolkovsky is the most prominent feature on the lunar farside.

“We really didn’t have anything to do in that pass, and we lost communication with the ground for a portion of that, behind the Moon. And our next maneuver coming up was after we passed around the Moon, plus two hours. And we were kind of ahead of the timeline in preparation for that maneuver. So we really didn’t have much to do except to look, and shoot pictures.”
Fred Haise (Chaikin, Voices, pg. 146)