Apollo 13, launched 13:13 CST on April 11, 1970, was planned as the third manned lunar landing mission. However, an explosion on board forced James A. Lovell, Jr., John L. Swigert, Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr. to abort the mission, circle the moon and return to Earth. Apollo 13 was classified a "successful failure."

As with all the Apollo Command Modules, inside the crew compartment of the "Odyssey" were three couches, installed so that the astronauts would always face forward (towards the top of the cone and the instrument panel). These couches were used during launch and landing, and had the mission gone as planned, would have been the primary location for the crew when not on the lunar surface.

In 1997, after years on public display in France, restoration began on the Apollo 13 command module by the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center. During that time, twenty-five (25) segments of backing restraint material were removed from mission commander James Lovell's spacecraft couch, and each were mounted in a slant-sided clear Lucite cylinder with the Apollo 13 crew patch decal below.

The pieces were presented to the key crew members of Universal Studio's movie production "Apollo 13" as a tribute to their participation in recreating one of the greatest human dramas ever to unfold in space.