Did any Apollo missions have backup parachutes?

Question

NASA's Apollo modules, the ones that went to the moon, had a fairly standard-for-the-time reentry method: Hit the atmosphere at the right angle, deploy a parachute after things are done burning up, and land gently upon the ocean.

Here's the main problem I can see: That parachute has to work. Otherwise, you have some fairly serious problems - such as water being like concrete if you hit it going very fast. And the Apollo modules where going very fast.

Did any of the Apollo missions include a backup parachute in case the main one didn't deploy properly?

Answer 1

The apollo command module had three parachutes and two of the three would have been sufficient to slow the capsule sufficiently for a survivable landing. However, this redundancy would not have protected against certain failure scenarios where the parachutes failed to deploy properly or multiple chutes failed due to a common cause, such as collision with debris.

   

   ^{Apollo 15 descends with two good parachutes into the Pacific Ocean on August 7, 1971 (source: Wiki on Apollo 15, image: NASA)}

Additional reference: Chapter 8 - Collision Avoidance Systems, 8.2 - Descent and Landing Systems, Safety Design for Space Systems, 2009 Butterworth-Heinemann, by Gary E. Musgrave Ph.D, Axel Larsen, Tommaso Sgobba