Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 Astronaut, Passed Away Aged 97
Apollo 13 Astronaut Jim Lovell has passed away aged 97.
He was responsible for guiding the spacecraft back to Earth in 1970 after the craft’s tanks exploded above Earth’s atmosphere.
Lovell was also part of the Apollo 8 mission, and is the only man to have gone to the moon twice, and not landed.
Acting Nasa head Sean Duffy said Lovell had helped the US space programme to “forge a historic path”.
In a statement, Lovell’s family said: “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.”
Tom Hanks, who played Lovell in the 1995 movie ‘Apollo 13’ called him one of those people “who dare, who dream, and who lead others to the places we would not go on our own.”
Hanks said in a statement on Instagram that Lovell’s many voyages “were not made for riches or celebrity, but because such challenges as those are what fuels the course of being alive.”
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Lovell was born 25 March 1928, and grew up with a love for airplanes.
In 1933, when he was five, his dad died in a car crash.
His mother worked to support Lovell, and couldn’t afford to send him to university.
Instead, Lovell joined the US Navy, and two years in he switched to the Navy Academy at Annapolis, on Chesapeake Bay, in the hope of working with rockets.
It was here he met his future wife, Marilyn Gerlach, and the pair married in 1952, and remained that way until Gerlach passed away in 2023.
In 1962, he joined NASA, and later joined fellow astronaut Frank Borman aboard the Gemini 7 for his first trip into space.
Lovell’s next flight put him in command of Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin, and in 1962 Apollo 8, where they photographed the Earth after flying behind the moon.
In April 1970, Lovell flew on Apollo 13, with Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. It was this trip where stirring tanks of oxygen and hydrogen – what should have been a routine procedure – ended in disaster.
The tanks exploded, and Lovell said to Mission Control “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
The crew fired up their lunar module Aquarius, but couldn’t use it for re-entry to Earth as it had no heat shield.
“For four days,” said Marilyn, “I didn’t know if I was a wife or a widow.”
Temperatures on Aquarius fell below freezing and food and water was rationed.
After several days, they climbed back on the command module Odyssey, and began re-entry.
Radio silence that accompanies re-entry went on for longer than normal, and the world was convinced that the three astronauts had perished.
Fortunately, Swigert’s voice cut through and reassured the world that they had safely made it back.
Lovell had four children, Barbara, James, Susan, and Jeffrey who survive him.
