Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the famous Apollo 13 mission, has died, NASA announced Friday. He was 97.
Apollo 13, a 1970 flight to the moon, became known as a “successful failure” after the spacecraft experienced an oxygen tank explosion thousands of miles from Earth but managed to safely return home.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement that Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois. Duffy praised Lovell’s life and work, saying he inspired millions of people.
“Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount,” Duffy said.
Lovell was the command module pilot for 1968’s Apollo 8 mission, the first to carry humans to the moon and back, though it did not land on the lunar surface.
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Andrew Chaikin, author of the 2007 book “A Man on the Moon” on the Apollo program, told CBS News that Lovell had some of the most memorable comments during the Apollo 8 TV transmissions. He recalled that Lovell called Earth a “grand oasis in the vastness of space.”
“Lovell had imagination, there was a part of Lovell that was about imagination, and that was a neat part of him,” Chaikin said.
Apollo 8 circled the moon 10 times and sent back the famous “Earthrise” photo of our world from space. Lovell reflected on that journey 50 years later in an interview with CBS News.
“Sometimes I look back and say, you know, ‘How did we ever do that?” he said.
In 1970, Lovell had a chance to go back to the moon with Apollo 13, with crewmates Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, but the mission abruptly changed with the explosion.
“Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” Swigert reported to mission control. Moments later, Lovell repeated, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
The mishap forced Lovell, his crewmates and NASA’s team on the ground to turn all their efforts toward returning to Earth safely.
“His calm strength under pressure helped return the crew safely to Earth and demonstrated the quick thinking and innovation that informed future NASA missions,” Duffy said of Lovell.
Lovell graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1952 and went on to become a naval aviator, including a four-year tour at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland. Chaikin said Lovell demonstrated his skills as a test pilot during Apollo 13.
“He always said that the true measure of a test pilot is not whether you can do the mission you’re assigned, but when things don’t go right, how you respond,” Chaikin said.
Chaikin described Lovell as being calm and unflappable throughout the crisis, but he recalled one moment when Lovell started to seem irritable.
“He’s been without sleep, and he’s worried about his crew and says, like, ‘You’re going to have to figure out this checklist because we’ve got to get some sleep,'” Chaikin said. “That’s like the only time in the whole mission when he even starts to show anything but calm, unflappable Lovell.”
Actor Tom Hanks played Lovell in the 1995 movie “Apollo 13,” which was nominated for best picture at the Oscars.
In an Instagram post Friday evening, Hanks wrote that Lovell’s “many voyages around Earth and on to so-very-close to the moon were not made for riches or celebrity, but because such challenges as those are what fuels the course of being alive — and who better than Jim Lovell to make those voyages. On this night of a full Moon, he passes on — to the heavens, to the cosmos, to the stars. God speed you, on this next voyage, Jim Lovell.”
Before the movie was released, Chaikin said Lovell told him that the true story of Apollo 13 had never been told.
“That’s how he felt,” Chaikin said. “Of course, everything changed when Ron Howard made that movie, to the point that Jim became probably the best known Apollo astronaut next to Neil Armstrong. But before that movie happened, he really felt that way.”
NASA shared a statement from Lovell’s family: “We are enormously proud of his amazing life and career accomplishments, highlighted by his legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight. 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.”
