Apollo 13 commander James Lovell dies at 97
The Nasa astronaut turned around a moon mission that nearly ended in disaster but instead inspired a Hollywood blockbuster
James Lovell, the pioneering US astronaut whose two dramatic missions to the moon included Apollo 13, the nearly disastrous trip that captivated the world and decades later inspired a triumphant Hollywood blockbuster, has died. He was 97.
He died on August 7 in Lake Forest, Illinois, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced, without citing a cause.
A member of Nasa’s second astronaut class, Lovell made history repeatedly during the heyday of the US space programme, notching the first rendezvous with a crewed spacecraft; the longest American space flight of the 1960s, in Gemini 7; and the first lunar mission, the Apollo 8 orbital journey that captured the iconic image of a blue-and-white Earth suspended against lonely, black emptiness.
His two trips during the Gemini programme and two more in Apollo capsules made him the first person to fly into space on four separate occasions and the first to fly twice to the moon.
His 29-plus days in space were the most of any American until the shuttle began roaring into low Earth orbit in the 1980s.
The most riveting moments of Lovell’s astronaut career came during the Apollo 13 accident, a four-day drama that unspooled while Nasa worked feverishly to bring the three-man crew home and a global audience pondered the awful prospect that they might be stranded on a one-way trip.
The Apollo 13 mission “was a disappointment, it was a failure”, Lovell said in a 2002 interview with Charlie Rose.