Apollo abort modes

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Apollo abort modes were procedures by which the nominal launch of an Apollo spacecraft, either the Saturn IB or Saturn V rocket, could be terminated. The abort of the flight allowed for the rescue of the crew if the rocket failed catastrophically. Depending on how far the flight had progressed, different procedure or modes would be used. In the history of the Apollo Program, none of the abort modes were ever used on any of the fifteen crewed Apollo spacecraft flights.

Houston's announcements of the current abort mode and the spacecraft commander's acknowledgements were among the few things said on the radio link during the first minutes of flight.

If the rocket failed during the first phases of the flight, the Emergency Detection System (EDS) would automatically give the command to abort. The reason is that life-threatening situations can develop too fast for humans to discuss and react to. In the later, less violent phases of the ascent, the EDS was turned off and an abort would have to be initiated manually.