(CNN) — Famed NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who commanded the harrowing Apollo 13 mission that was forced to abandon a lunar landing attempt in 1970, has died. He was 97.
Lovell died on August 7 in Lake Forest, Illinois, according to a NASA news release. The cause of death was not immediately clear.
Lovell’s family requested privacy but said, “We are saddened to announce the passing of our beloved father, USN Captain James A. ‘Jim’ Lovell, a Navy pilot and officer, astronaut, leader, and space explorer,” in a statement.
“We are enormously proud of his amazing life and career accomplishments, highlighted by his legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight,” the family noted in its statement. “But, to all of us, he was Dad, Granddad, and the Leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our Hero. We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humor, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible. He was truly one of a kind.”
An ill-fated mission
Lovell was already well-known among NASA astronauts — having flown to space on the Gemini 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8 missions — before he was selected to command Apollo 13, which would have marked NASA’s third successful crewed moon landing.
But during the ill-fated mission — which carried Lovell as well as astronauts John Swigert Jr. and Fred Haise Jr. on board — an oxygen tank located on the crew’s service module exploded when they were about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) away from Earth.
Lovell delivered the news to mission control, saying “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
With the damage effectively taking out their power source and other life support supplies, the Apollo 13 crew had to abruptly abandon their trek to the lunar surface and use several engine burns to swing around the far side of the moon and put themselves on a course back toward Earth.
The three-person crew made a high-stakes splashdown return in the South Pacific Ocean about three days after the tank explosion, marking the conclusion of what has come to be known as the “successful failure” of the Apollo missions.
The ordeal was fictionalized in Ron Howard’s 1995 film “Apollo 13.” Lovell was portrayed by actor Tom Hanks in the film but made a brief cameo appearance as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the Navy ship that recovered the Apollo 13 crew after splashdown.
“There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others to places we would not go on our own,” Hanks said in a statement posted to Instagram on Friday. “Jim Lovell, who for a long while had gone farther into space and for longer than any other person of our planet, was that kind of guy.”
Lovell never made it to the lunar surface.
“Twice a bridesmaid, never a bride,” Lovell said with a laugh when speaking to CNN in 2008 for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 8, admitting that for years he had harbored resentment that his last mission had been a “failure.”
It was only later on, Lovell said, that he fully realized what a success Apollo 13 had been, with the safe return of the crew to Earth.
“It is mind-boggling in some respects,” Lovell told CNN.
In a statement released Friday, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy credited Lovell’s “calm strength under pressure (that) helped return the crew safely to Earth and demonstrated the quick thinking and innovation that informed future NASA missions.”
“I really learned that you can’t suddenly have a problem, and then just you know, close your eyes and hope there’s a miracle coming on, because the miracle is something you have to do yourself, or having people to help you,” Lovell told NASA’s “Houston, We Have a Podcast” in 2020.
To the moon and back
Lovell was part of NASA’s second-ever astronaut class, selected in September 1962 and nicknamed the “New Nine.” He became the first astronaut to make four spaceflights, totaling more than 715 hours in space. And joining the Apollo 13 crew after having first served on Apollo 8, which intentionally circumnavigated the moon but did not land on its surface, made Lovell the first human ever to see the moon up close for a second time.
In an interview with CNN in 2018 at age 90, Lovell recalled his adventure as Apollo 8’s navigator. “To me, it was a mini Lewis and Clark expedition,” Lovell said. “We were going someplace new to observe the far side of the moon, which had never been seen before.”
Apollo 7 had marked the first crewed mission of the program in October 1968 after a launchpad fire killed three astronauts in January 1967. Apollo 8’s launch followed a couple of months after Apollo 7, occurring just before Christmas 1968.
At one point Lovell extended his arm toward the window of the spacecraft. Earth appeared so small that he could cover it with his thumb.
“I realized that behind my thumb, there were about (3.5 billion) people and everything I ever knew,” Lovell said in the 2018 interview. “I suddenly got a different feeling about life in general and my position in it.”
On Christmas eve, a broadcast of the astronauts sharing their view 70 miles above the moon reached an estimated 1 billion people in 64 countries. The three crew members each read a few lines from the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Astronaut Frank Borman closed with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
The same day, Lovell’s crewmate William Anders took the iconic “Earthrise” image of our home planet emerging from beyond the lunar horizon. The photo has captured the imaginations of generations of astronauts and been credited with helping to spur environmental movements.
Apollo 8 came at a time when the country needed hope, Lovell recalled in 2008. The year the mission launched included the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, doubts of a victory in Vietnam after the Tet offensive, and showdowns between police and anti-war protestors during the Democratic National Convention.
“Providence happened to put everything together at the end of the year to give the American public an uplift after what had been a poor year,” Lovell said.
A storied career
Anders, Borman and Lovell were recognized by Time Magazine as “Men of the Year” in 1968 for their work on Apollo 8. The mission inspired wonder and excitement around spaceflight far beyond the halls of NASA.
“We were flying to the moon for the first time,” Lovell told CNN in 2008. “Seeing the far side of the moon for the first time. Coming around and seeing the Earth as it really is — a small fragile planet with a rather normal star, our sun.”
Retired NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person to walk on the moon in 1969, paid tribute to Lovell Friday in a post on the social media platform X.
“Grieving the loss of one of my best friends, Jim Lovell. His extraordinary legacy is cemented by many space missions: Gemini VII, Gemini XII, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13,” Aldrin said in the post. “Our mutual respect had no limits. The Gemini XII mission we flew together paved the way for the Apollo missions. Heartfelt condolences to Jim’s family. Farewell Jim. You will be missed, my friend. Godspeed!”
After Apollo 13, Lovell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in April 1970 and served as the deputy director of Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1971 to 1973. He retired from the Navy and NASA in March 1973, and was later inducted into the US Astronauts Hall of Fame in March 1993 and awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton in 1995.
Lovell found himself at the center of a debate over artifact ownership in November 2011 when an Apollo 13 checklist he used for calculations sold at auction for $388,375, causing NASA to question whether he had the right to sell it. Then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden met with Lovell and other astronauts to work out the issue, but no agreement was reached.
President Barack Obama signed a bill into law in September 2012 that gave Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts full ownership rights of the artifacts they collected from their missions.
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