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New York Times
12-08-2025
- General
- New York Times
Corrections: Aug. 12, 2025
An obituary on Saturday about James A. Lovell Jr., the commander of the three-man Apollo 13 spacecraft that survived a near-catastrophic explosion as it approached the moon in April 1970, misstated how much time elapsed before Apollo 13 detected signs of trouble. It was 56 hours, not 56 minutes. It also misidentified the astronaut who was to accompany him to the surface of the moon in a lunar module, though that mission was never accomplished. He was Fred W. Haise Jr., not John L. Swigert Jr. Mr. Swigert was to remain behind in the orbiting Apollo 13 spaceship. The obituary also misstated how many great-grandchildren Captain Lovell had. It is nine, not eight. An article and related map on Aug. 1 about the countries that recognize a Palestinian state, relying on a U.N. document from April 2024, misstated the Czech Republic's position on the recognition of a Palestinian state. While Czechoslovakia recognized Palestinian statehood in 1988, the Czech Republic recognizes the goal of an independent Palestinian state, but does not currently recognize it as one. An article on Thursday about Britain's charities' regulator clearing Prince Harry of bullying, harassment and sexism at the charity he co-founded misstated the year that Sophie Chandauka became a trustee of Sentebale. It was 2008, not 2009. Because of an editing error, the article also misstated the number of trustees left on the Sentebale board after the resignations on March 24. Five trustees resigned, leaving only Ms. Chandauka on the board, not five of nine. Ms. Chandauka appointed four new trustees on March 25. An article on Monday about the announcement that the Row NYC in Times Square will stop operating as a housing shelter for migrants misstated the ownership of the Row NYC. Rockport Group, a Boston-based real estate private equity firm, no longer has a stake in the hotel. An article on Monday about the weekend's box office earnings misstated the rating of the 'Naked Gun' remake. It is PG-13, not R. An article on Saturday about the music label Penrose Records and its influence in a soft-touch style of soul music misspelled the surname of an artist on the label's roster. She is Vicky Tafoya, not Trafoya. A Metropolitan Diary entry on Sunday misspelled the surname of the drummer for the rock band The Animals. He is John Steel, not Steele. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email nytnews@ To share feedback, please visit Comments on opinion articles may be emailed to letters@ For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email customercare@
Yahoo
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Astronaut Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 leader, dead at 97
James A. 'Jim' Lovell Jr., the NASA astronaut who famously led the Apollo 13 mission through a life-threatening crisis in space, died Aug. 7 at his home in Lake Forest, Ill. He was 97. Lovell commanded Apollo 13 in April 1970, a mission meant to land on the moon that was derailed when an oxygen tank exploded two days after launch. His calm leadership and quick decision-making helped guide crewmates Fred Haise and Jack Swigert back to Earth in what became known as a 'successful failure' for the space program — a story later immortalized in the 1995 film Apollo 13, in which actor Tom Hanks portrayed Lovell. Hanks paid tribute Friday, calling Lovell 'a leader, a gentleman, and a friend.' In a post on Instagram, he wrote: 'Godspeed you, on this next voyage,' referencing the astronaut's pioneering spirit. A veteran of four spaceflights, Lovell also flew on Gemini 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8, the first mission to orbit the moon. In total, he logged more than 715 hours in space and became one of NASA's most respected and steady hands during the agency's pioneering years. Following his retirement from NASA and the Navy in 1973, Lovell pursued a business career and remained an outspoken advocate for space exploration. He received numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Born in Cleveland in 1928, Lovell was remembered by colleagues and family as humble, optimistic and quick with a smile. His wife of 70 years, Marilyn, died in 2023. He is survived by four children, 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. 'Lovell's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon,' NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement on X. 'He embodied the bold resolve and optimism of both past and future explorers.' The post Astronaut Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 leader, dead at 97 appeared first on Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
10-08-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Jim Lovell obituary
Just after 9.20pm, Houston time, on Monday 13 April 1970, Jim Lovell, who has died aged 97, looked out of the left side window of Odyssey, the command module of the Apollo 13 lunar mission. Caught in the sunlight was what looked like smoke, which Lovell believed, correctly, was oxygen. It was pouring out of the service module, the technological core of the spacecraft. Lovell and his fellow crew members, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, were 205,000 miles from Earth. Thirteen minutes earlier, a muffled explosion had rocked Apollo 13 and Lovell now realised that 'we were in serious trouble' and, unlike Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, or Apollo 12's Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, he would never fulfil his life's ambition to walk on the moon. Indeed the issue for Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, had now become whether he and the other two astronauts would even walk on Earth again. The catastrophe – the culmination of a series of earlier technological and maintenance errors on Earth – risked turning the Odyssey into Nasa's mausoleum, destined to orbit moon and Earth indefinitely, with its three astronauts inside. Almost nine months had elapsed since Apollo 11 and Armstrong's 'giant leap for mankind'. Apollo 12 had followed in November 1969. By the time Apollo 13 took off, media space fatigue had set in. At 9pm on that fateful Monday the astronauts had completed a live broadcast to Earth – which went largely unwatched. Given the choice between Lovell and co and the Doris Day Show, CBS had opted for Doris, and neither NBC nor ABC had carried the transmission. Apollo 13 was approaching its target in the moon highland area of Fra Mauro. There, Lovell and Haise were set to board the lunar module, Aquarius, and land on the moon, leaving Swigert orbiting on the Odyssey. But when Swigert flicked a switch for a routine 'cryo-stir' of the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks in the service module that provided the spacecraft with air, water and electricity, a short circuit led to a fire, which led to an explosion in oxygen tank two – and tank one was leaking. At 9.08pm Swigert uttered the words that, with a change of tense – made for the 1995 film Apollo 13 – went into history: 'OK Houston, we've had a problem', a phrase echoed seconds later by Lovell. Neither mission control nor the crew could initially work out what that problem was. Intense debate ensued, in space and in Houston. The 20-mile cloud of gas and detritus could be seen from Earth. What followed was an extraordinary display of heroism and ingenuity. In a fraught operation the command module was shut down, conserving its internal batteries (and hence power for re-entry to Earth's atmosphere) and by the end of that day Lovell and his comrades had moved into their 'lifeboat', the lunar module, with minimal power and water. The craft then looped around the moon and, early the following morning, fired the lunar module's descent engine to alter the trajectory. Passing around the moon, the astronauts reached the greatest distance from the Earth ever achieved by human beings, 248,655 miles (more than 400,000km). Lovell later realigned the craft and fired the descent engine to target the south-west Pacific recovery area. Odyssey – used as a 'bedroom' by the crew – was no warmer than a refrigerator. The interior of Aquarius, meanwhile, was covered in condensation, 'three men cold as frogs in a frozen pond' was Lovell's description. All three men became dehydrated, and Haise contracted a kidney infection. Aquarius, designed to carry two men for two days, had to carry three, for four. On the Wednesday, in a piece of masterly improvisation devised between Houston and Apollo 13, the astronauts constructed a purifier to cut potentially lethal carbon dioxide levels. Later that day Lovell honed the trajectory to ensure the craft hit the middle of the 10-mile-wide entry corridor into the Earth's atmosphere – the alternatives were death in orbit or burn-up. Exhausted and severely dehydrated, Lovell repeated the operation early on the Friday morning of touchdown. At 7.14am the service module was jettisoned. At 10.43am, with the lunar module Aquarius evacuated and the crew back on Odyssey, Aquarius was jettisoned. At 12.07pm Odyssey splashed into the Pacific, 6.4km from the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima – from whose decks wafted the strains of Aquarius, a song from the musical Hair, played by the ship's band. 'As long as we were still breathing and had methods to figure out solutions to our predicament,' Lovell recalled a quarter of a century later, 'we kept going.' Lovell was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Blanche (nee Masek), and James Lovell. His father, a coal furnace salesman, was killed in a car accident when Jim was five, and he and his mother moved to Milwaukee. The boy was fascinated by rocketry, and by the pioneers of the interwar and wartime period. As a teenager at Juneau high school in Milwaukee he built – and launched – his own rocket. His uncle had been a first world war naval flier and, while in his senior school year, Lovell applied to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland – but was turned down. Money was tight, so he applied for, and was accepted on, the navy's Holloway plan, which gave him two years of a free engineering course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plus flight training, sea duty and a commission. After two years it also led a senior officer to suggest to Lovell that he should renew his application to Annapolis. He was accepted, wrote his thesis on liquid fuelled rocketry, graduated in 1952, and soon afterwards married his childhood sweetheart, Marilyn Gerlach. After serving on the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La he spent four years as a test pilot at what was then the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent, Maryland, managing the McDonnell Douglas F4H Phantom jet fighter programme. He was also safety officer with Fighter Squadron 101 in Oceana, Virginia. Lovell applied for, and was turned down, by Nasa, for its Mercury programme, which, between 1962 and 1963, focused on getting astronauts into orbit. This was the height of the space race; the Soviet Union had been first into space with the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and in 1961 sent Yuri Gagarin up as the first person to orbit the Earth. In 1962 Lovell was accepted for the Gemini programme, which developed lunar flight technology and demonstrated, for those who were watching, that the Soviet venture, though big on rocket muscle, lagged in space science. Lovell's first flight was piloting Gemini 7, with Frank Borman, in 1965 on a record-breaking 14-day Earth orbit that included a rendezvous with Gemini 6. The following year he commanded Gemini 12 on the last Gemini mission. The first manned lunar mission, Apollo 8, at Christmas 1968, brought Lovell, together with Borman and William Anders, to global attention. It also raised morale in a year that had seen the Vietnamese Tet offensive, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinated, and urban uprisings across the US. Apollo 8 orbited the moon 10 times. Lovell and his colleagues read from Genesis to the 'good Earth' on Christmas Eve, were made Time magazine's men of the year, and their pictures appeared on stamps. That flight, the Guardian's Anthony Tucker reported at the time, had 'been as near to perfection as the most optimistic could have dreamed'. Then, for Lovell, came the flight of Apollo 13, which, after the initial media indifference, turned into a global event because of the drama involved. By the time he embarked on the mission, he had already spent a record-breaking 572 hours in space; his eventual tally, 715 hours and five minutes, was not exceeded until after the advent of the Skylab space station in 1973. Apollo 13 was, however, the end of Lovell's space career. Less than three years later he left Nasa and went into business in Houston. 'Our mission was a failure but I like to think it was a successful failure,' he said, and indeed, as a triumph over adversity, it was. It also ended the era that had begun with President John F Kennedy's declaration in 1961 that by the end of the decade the US should land a man on the moon and return him 'safely to the Earth'. Armstrong and Aldrin had fulfilled that pledge, but Lovell's adventure reminded Americans of the cost of the lunar programme and it posed the question, with the Soviet Union long out of the race, of what it had all been for. There were four more Apollo landings, but, as Gerard DeGroot wrote in Dark Side of the Moon (2007): 'Of all the lunar missions, probably 99% of Americans can recall only two: Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 – the first one and the nearly disastrous third one. The others have faded into obscurity and insignificance.' For years Nasa seemed reluctant to talk about Apollo 13, which irritated Lovell, who never lost his dream of walking on the moon. He was, another astronaut was reputed to have said, 'the Captain Ahab of outer space'. It took Ron Howard's film – Lovell liked Tom Hanks's portrayal of him, although he thought Kevin Costner would have been a better lookalike – to elevate Lovell and his comrades, justly, to the American pantheon. Lovell co-wrote the book, Lost Moon (1994), on which the movie was based, and had a fleeting on-screen role – greeting Hanks on the Iwo Jima – at the end of the film. Much earlier he made an appearance in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), starring David Bowie. Lovell's wife, Marilyn, died in 2023. He is survived by their children, Barbara, James, Susan and Jeffrey, 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. James Arthur Lovell, astronaut, test pilot and businessman, born 25 March 1928; died 7 August 2025
Yahoo
09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Remembering Jim Lovell, the Most Down-to-Earth Astronaut
The safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts after their lunar landing mission encountered technical difficulties, 17th April 1970. From left to right, Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise, Mission Commander James A. Lovell and Command Module pilot John L. Swigert Credit - Getty Image Jim Lovell's job never required him to be a poet. Once the most experienced man in space flight—with two trips in the Gemini program and two lunar missions in Apollo—Lovell, who died August 7 at age 97, went places few others have gone and saw things few others had seen. But that didn't mean there was music when he spoke. 'We're on our way, Frank,' was the best he could muster in 1965 when the engines on his Titan rocket lit and he and Frank Borman took off aboard Gemini 7. 'Boy, boy, boy,' he said, when he and Buzz Aldrin splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean at the end of their Gemini 12 mission in 1966. 'Houston, we've had a problem,' he intoned when a sudden explosion crippled his Apollo 13 spacecraft in 1970, reporting the incident as if it were nothing more troubling than the family car running out of windshield washer fluid. None of this was Lovell's fault. Jack Swigert, Lovell's command module pilot aboard Apollo 13, once said that the very thing that qualified astronauts to embark on such potentially mortal missions as flights to the moon—a cool, engineer's detachment from the scope of the experience and the chances they were taking—disqualified them from adopting the larger, epochal view of things. You could either go to the moon or you could appreciate the going; you couldn't do both. And yet once, in my experience, Lovell went lyrical. It was 1995, and his and my book about his Apollo 13 mission had just been made into a movie starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard. It was a gobsmacking experience for me. I had spent my career quietly toiling as a science journalist, enjoying some recognition for my work, but nothing remotely like fame. Lovell, on the other hand, knew a thing or two about being celebrated, being feted, being recognized in restaurants and sought out for interviews. And he knew, too, that fame was ephemeral—that the public's attention could be a fickle and flickering thing. You are hailed after your splashdown; you are forgotten the next year. And so Lovell tried to offer me the benefit of his experience, decades after he had retired from the glittery astronaut corps. 'Remember where you're standing when the spotlight goes off,' he told me on the phone one day, 'because no one's going to help you off the stage.' It was wise; it was wonderful; and I held that counsel close. Lovell wore his fame lightly—like a loose garment. He was a man of the Earth—a naval officer, a father of four, a homeowner—who just happened to have been to space. Around the time we were finishing our book, he was planning a vacation with his wife, Marilyn, and was at a loss as to where to go. 'I've been to Europe,' he told me. 'I've been to Asia and Australia and the moon and Africa.' The moon made the list, but it wasn't even first. Lovell took a similarly easy, workmanlike approach to all four of his space missions. His Gemini 7 flight was a long, gritty, lunch-bucket mission, with him and Borman spending 14 days aloft in a spacecraft that afforded them little more habitable volume than two commercial coach seats. There were no spacewalks for Borman and Lovell; no dramatic dockings with the uncrewed Agena target vehicle with which other Gemini crews would practice orbital maneuvering. The men were flying lab rats, sent aloft to determine if human beings could survive in space for the fortnight the longest lunar missions would last. 'It was two weeks in a men's room,' Lovell would tell me. That mission was enough for Borman. He did not raise his hand for any more Gemini flights and instead went straight into training for the Apollo program, with its spacious capsules and its glamorous trips to the moon. Lovell could not get enough of flying and eleven months later commanded Gemini 12, the final mission of the Gemini series, with Aldrin in the co-pilot's seat. The men walked to their rocket with signs on their backs. Lovell's read THE. Aldrin's read END. It was in the Apollo program that the workaday Lovell became the iconic Lovell. Space historians debate what the most noteworthy missions of all time are and virtually all of them would put Yuri Gagarin's single orbit of the Earth in 1961—making him the first human being in space—on the list. After that, most would include Apollo 8, Apollo 11—the first moon landing—and Apollo 13. Lovell flew on two of them. Apollo 8 was a rhapsodic ending to a blood-soaked year. It was 1968, and in January the Tet Offensive in Vietnam began. That was followed by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Robert Kennedy, riots exploding in cities across the country, and the violent clashes between protestors and police at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. But NASA had something fine and bracing and curative planned. During the summer, the space agency quietly decided that before the year was out it would launch Apollo 8, with Borman, Lovell, and rookie astronaut Bill Anders aboard, into orbit around the there, the astronauts would broadcast a message home, showing the 3.5 billion people living on the Earth what their planet looked like from space and, more transformatively, what the ancient, tortured surface of the moon looked like crawling beneath the spacecraft's window. There are a lot of things that determine just when a lunar mission will fly—the readiness of the spacecraft, the training of the crew, the availability of naval forces to effectuate recovery, the relative positions of the Earth and the moon when a launch is planned, and more. For Apollo 8 all of those tumblers fell just right and NASA determined that the optimal day for the historic orbit and broadcast home would be Christmas Eve. When that day arrived, nearly one in every three people on the planet was in front of a television set. Borman, Lovell, and Anders played their parts gracefully—describing what they were seeing and thinking and experiencing. 'The vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe-inspiring,' Lovell said. 'It makes you realize just what you have back on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.' The moon, Borman added, 'looks rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone.' 'The horizon here is very, very stark,' said Anders. 'The sky is pitch black and the … moon is very bright. And the contrast between the sky and the moon is a vivid, dark line.' The astronauts continued their lunar travelogue for a few minutes more and then—befitting the enormity of the experience, befitting the fine and slender thread that at that moment was connecting one species to two worlds, and most important befitting the season—the men concluded their broadcast with the words of Genesis. 'And God called the light day and the darkness He called night,' Lovell said when it was his turn to read. 'And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters.'' Borman and Anders read from the ancient verse too, and then Borman, as commander, concluded the broadcast. 'And from the crew of Apollo 8,' he said, 'we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.' Borman, Lovell, and Anders came back to ticker tape parades, an appearance before Congress, a world good-will tour. TIME named them Men of the Year for 1968. A photograph Anders took of the Earth rising above the surface of the moon would be credited with sparking the environmental movement and would be hailed as one of the most important photos ever taken. Borman and Anders needed no more of space and no more of fame; both men quietly retired from the astronaut corps. History would note that Lovell did not. In April 1970, he was set to fly Apollo 13, a mission that would have been NASA's third moon landing. But history would deny Lovell the opportunity to get his boots dirty when an explosion in an on-board oxygen tank crippled the lunar mothership, making a landing impossible and turning the mission of exploration to one of survival. Lovell would successfully steer his broken ship home, bringing himself, Swigert, and crewmate Fred Haise back alive. There would be talk—briefly—of giving the man who had twice been to the moon but had never been able to walk on it another chance at yet another mission. But Lovell knew his time in space was up. There were too many other astronauts competing for a seat on the few Apollo missions remaining to let one man fly three times. And Lovell could not—would not—subject Marilyn, whom the exploding oxygen tank had nearly widowed, to yet one more launch, one more mission, one more roll of the mortal dice. Marilyn is now gone, predeceasing Jim by nearly two years. Jim is now gone too. But they endure. During Apollo 8, Lovell spotted a small, pretty, triangular mountain at the edge of the moon's Sea of Tranquility that he named Mount Marilyn. The other astronauts took up the name and in 2017, the International Astronomical Union, which governs official space nomenclature, broke its rule requiring features or objects named after people to to be named posthumously, and recognized Mount Marilyn. My family sent Marilyn flowers and she sweetly called with her thanks. Over the years, I enjoyed the hospitality of the Lovells on a handful of occasions, staying in their home in Lake Forest, Illinois—once with my daughters who delighted in Jim's tour of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, where Apollo 8 is on display, and where he leaned close to Anders' earthrise picture with them and explained how it was taken. In one of the rooms in the Lovell home is a small bronzed baby shoe that Lovell the explorer wore when he was just Lovell the baby. I couldn't help thinking how rich and complete it would be to have a bronzed lunar boot next to it. But the foot that wore the baby shoe never did touch the moon. That fickle spotlight Jim warned me about has now shone its last on him. He has left the stage—and we are left poorer for his absence. Write to Jeffrey Kluger at Solve the daily Crossword
The Australian
09-08-2025
- Science
- The Australian
Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97
James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97. Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday. '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,' NASA said. "We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements.' One of NASA's most travelled astronauts in the agency's first decade, Lovell flew four times – Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 – with the two Apollo flights riveting the folks back on Earth. Lovell and fellow astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert received renewed fame with the retelling of the Apollo 13 mission in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 where actor Tom Hanks – portraying Lovell – famously said, 'Houston, we have a problem.' In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave Earth's orbit and the first to fly to and circle the moon. They could not land, but they put the U.S. ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers told the crew that their stunning pale blue dot photo of Earth from the moon, a world first, and the crew's Christmas Eve reading from Genesis saved America from a tumultuous 1968. The Apollo 13 mission had a lifelong impact on LovellBut the big rescue mission was still to come. That was during the harrowing Apollo 13 flight in 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But Apollo 13's service module, carrying Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and clammy days in the cramped lunar module as a lifeboat. ''The thing that I want most people to remember is (that) in some sense it was very much of a success,'' Lovell said during a 1994 interview. ''Not that we accomplished anything, but a success in that we demonstrated the capability of (NASA) personnel.'' A retired Navy captain known for his calm demeanour, Lovell told a NASA historian that his brush with death affected him. 'I don't worry about crises any longer,' he said in 1999. Whenever he has a problem, 'I say, 'I could have been gone back in 1970. I'm still here. I'm still breathing.' So, I don't worry about crises.' Lovell had ice water in his veins like other astronauts, but he didn't display the swagger some had, just quiet confidence, said Smithsonian Institution historian Roger Launius. He called Lovell 'a very personable, very down-to-earth type of person, who says 'This is what I do. Yes, there's risk involved. I measure risk.'' Lovell spent about 30 days in space across four missions In all, Lovell flew four space missions — and until the Skylab flights of the mid-1970s, he held the world record for the longest time in space with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds. 'He was a member of really the first generation of American astronauts and went on to inspire multiple generations of Americans to look at the stars and want to explore,' said Bruce McClintock, who leads the RAND Corp. Space Enterprise Initiative. Aboard Apollo 8, Lovell described the oceans and land masses of Earth. "What I keep imagining, is if I am some lonely traveller from another planet, what I would think about the Earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not," he remarked. That mission may be as important as the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, a flight made possible by Apollo 8, Launius said. "I think in the history of space flight, I would say that Jim was one of the pillars of the early space flight program," Gene Kranz, NASA's legendary flight director, once said. Lovell was immortalised by Tom Hanks' portrayal But if historians consider Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 the most significant of the Apollo missions, it was during Lovell's last mission that he came to embody for the public the image of the cool, decisive astronaut. The Apollo 13 crew of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was on the way to the moon in April 1970, when an oxygen tank from the spaceship exploded 200,000 miles from Earth. That, Lovell recalled, was 'the most frightening moment in this whole thing.' Then oxygen began escaping and 'we didn't have solutions to get home.' 'We knew we were in deep, deep trouble,' he told NASA's historian. Four-fifths of the way to the moon, NASA scrapped the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive. Lovell's "Houston, we've had a problem," a variation of a comment Swigert had radioed moments before, became famous. What unfolded over the next four days captured the imagination of the world. With Lovell commanding the spacecraft, Kranz led hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in a furious rescue plan. The plan involved the astronauts moving from the service module, which was haemorrhaging oxygen, into the cramped, dark and frigid lunar lander while they rationed their dwindling oxygen, water and electricity. Using the lunar module as a lifeboat, they swung around the moon, aimed for Earth and raced home. 'There is never a guarantee of success when it comes to space,' McClintock said. Lovell showed a 'leadership role and heroic efforts in the recovery of Apollo 13.' By coolly solving the problems under the most intense pressure imaginable, the astronauts and the crew on the ground became heroes. In the process of turning what seemed routine into a life-and-death struggle, the entire flight team had created one of NASA's finest moments. "They demonstrated to the world they could handle truly horrific problems and bring them back alive," said Launius. He regretted never being able to walk on the moon The loss of the opportunity to walk on the moon "is my one regret," Lovell said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press. President Bill Clinton agreed when he awarded Lovell the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1995. "While you may have lost the moon ... you gained something that is far more important perhaps: the abiding respect and gratitude of the American people," he said. Lovell once said that while he was disappointed he never walked on the moon, "The mission itself and the fact that we triumphed over certain catastrophe does give me a deep sense of satisfaction." And Lovell clearly understood why this failed mission afforded him far more fame than had Apollo 13 accomplished its goal. "Going to the moon, if everything works right, it's like following a cookbook. It's not that big a deal," he told the AP in 2004. "If something goes wrong, that's what separates the men from the boys." James A. Lovell was born March 25, 1928, in Cleveland. He attended the University of Wisconsin before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. On the day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife, Marilyn, were married. A test pilot at the Navy Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, Lovell was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1962. Lovell retired from the Navy and from the space program in 1973, and went into private business. In 1994, he and Jeff Kluger wrote "Lost Moon," the story of the Apollo 13 mission and the basis for the film "Apollo 13." In one of the final scenes, Lovell appeared as a Navy captain, the rank he actually had. He and his family ran a now-closed restaurant in suburban Chicago, Lovell's of Lake Forest. His wife, Marilynn, died in 2023. Survivors include four children. In a statement, his family hailed him as their 'hero.' 'We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humour, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible,' his family said. 'He was truly one of a kind.' AP World Vladimir Putin will make his first visit to the United States in more than a decade to discuss Donald Trump's demand for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. The Wall Street Journal Options under discussion focus on special forces operations, intelligence support and precision targeting.
