Lovell flew four space missions, never walked on moon

9/8/2025 5:39

American astronaut Jim

Lovell, commander of the failed 1970 mission to the moon that

nearly ended in disaster but became an inspirational saga of

survival and the basis for the hit movie "Apollo 13," has died

at the age of 97, NASA said on Friday.



Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks played Lovell in director Ron

Howard's acclaimed 1995 film. It recounted NASA's Apollo 13

mission, which was planned as humankind's third lunar landing

but went horribly wrong when an onboard explosion on the way to

the moon put the lives of the three astronauts in grave danger.



Lovell and crew mates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise endured

frigid, cramped conditions, dehydration and hunger for 3-1/2

days while concocting with Mission Control in Houston ingenious

solutions to bring the crippled spacecraft safely back to Earth.



"A 'successful failure' describes exactly what (Apollo) 13

was - because it was a failure in its initial mission - nothing

had really been accomplished," Lovell told Reuters in 2010 in an

interview marking the 40th anniversary of the flight.



The outcome, the former Navy test pilot said, was "a great

success in the ability of people to take an almost-certain

catastrophe and turn it into a successful recovery."



The Apollo 13 mission came nine months after Neil Armstrong

had become the first person to walk on the moon when he took

"one giant leap for mankind" during the Apollo 11 mission on

July 20, 1969.



There was drama even before Apollo 13's launch on April 11,

1970. Days earlier, the backup lunar module pilot inadvertently

exposed the crew to German measles but Lovell and Haise were

immune to it. Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot, had no

immunity to measles and was replaced at the last minute by

rookie astronaut Swigert.



The mission generally went smoothly for its first two days.

But moments after the crew finished a TV broadcast showing how

they lived in space, an exposed wire in a command module oxygen

tank sparked an explosion that badly damaged the spacecraft

200,000 miles (320,000 km) from Earth. The accident not only

ruined their chances of landing on the moon but imperiled their

lives.



"Suddenly there's a 'hiss-bang. And the spacecraft rocks

back and forth,'" Lovell said in a 1999 NASA oral history

interview. "The lights come on and jets fire. And I looked at

Haise to see if he knew what caused it. He had no idea. Looked

at Jack Swigert. He had no idea. And then, of course, things

started to happen."







'HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM'



Swigert saw a warning light and told Mission Control:

"Houston, we've had a problem here." In the movie, the line is

instead attributed to Lovell and famously delivered by Hanks -

slightly reworded - as: "Houston, we have a problem."



With a dangerous loss of power, the three astronauts

abandoned the command module and went to the lunar module -

designed for two men to land on the moon. They used it as a

lifeboat for a harrowing 3-1/2 day return to Earth.



The astronauts and the U.S. space agency experts in Houston

scrambled to figure out how to get the crew safely home with a

limited amount of equipment at their disposal.



Electrical systems were turned off to save energy, sending

temperatures plummeting to near freezing. Water was drastically

rationed, food was short and sleep was nearly impossible. The

crew had to contrive a filter system to remove high levels of

carbon dioxide that could have proven deadly.



"The thought crossed our mind that we were in deep trouble.

But we never dwelled on it," Lovell said in the NASA interview.

"We never admitted to ourselves that, 'Hey, we're not going to

make it.' Well, only one time - when Fred looked at ... the

lunar module and found out we had about 45 hours worth of power

and we were 90 hours from home."



People worldwide were captivated by the events unfolding in

space - and got a happy ending. The astronauts altered course to

fly a single time around the moon and back to Earth, splashing

down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa on April 17, 1970.



Lovell never got another chance to walk on the moon after

Apollo 13, which was his fourth and final space trip.



His first trip had been the Gemini 7 mission in 1965,

featuring the first link-up of two manned spacecraft. His second

was Gemini 12 in 1966, the last of the programs that led to the

Apollo moon missions.



Lovell's third mission was Apollo 8 in December 1968, the

first to orbit the moon. During a telecast to Earth from their

spacecraft on Christmas Eve, Lovell and crew mates Frank Borman

and William Anders read verses from the Bible's Book of Genesis.



Lovell, who later had a moon crater named in his honor,

retired as an astronaut in 1973, working first for a harbor

towing company and then in telecommunications.



He co-authored a 1994 book, "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage

of Apollo 13," that became the basis for Howard's film. Lovell

recalled a meeting with Howard in which the director asked the

astronaut which actor he would want to play him.



"I said, 'Kevin Costner,'" Lovell said. "And Hanks never

lets me forget that... But Hanks did a great job."



Lovell made a cameo appearance in the film as the commander

of the U.S. Navy ship that retrieves the astronauts and shakes

hands with Hanks.



James Lovell was born in Cleveland on March 25, 1928. He was

just 5 when his father died and his mother moved the family to

Milwaukee. He became interested in space as a teenager. He

graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1952 and became a test

pilot before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 1962.



He had four children with his wife, Marilyn.