Haise flew as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 13 with Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert. The mission was intended to land at Fra Mauro, where Haise would have become one of the next people to walk on the Moon. Instead, an oxygen tank explosion turned the flight into a survival mission. Haise helped operate the lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat, conserving power, water, and oxygen until the crew could return safely to Earth.

Although illness and the aborted landing made Apollo 13 grueling, Haise's work helped turn a near-disaster into one of NASA's clearest demonstrations of discipline under pressure. He later commanded Space Shuttle Enterprise Approach and Landing Tests, helping prove that the shuttle orbiter — open definition could glide to a runway landing. His career connects Apollo's crisis-tested ingenuity with the earliest flight testing of the Shuttle program.

Haise's background fit the broader pattern of the early astronaut corps: technical training, operational discipline, and a career built around difficult work before spaceflight. His formal education included University of Oklahoma (B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, 1959). His service background is recorded as United States Marine Corps and United States Air Force, Fighter pilot. His personal record also sits alongside a family life recorded as two marriages, four children, a reminder that these careers unfolded within ordinary lives as well as national history.

Haise's flown space career centered on Apollo 13, where he served as Lunar Module Pilot. Planned lunar landing mission that became a survival and recovery mission after an oxygen tank explosion. The crew used the lunar module as a lifeboat, looped around the Moon, and returned safely to Earth without landing.