Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 commander, dies aged 97 | Nasa

Apollo 13 commander James, Jimes, who helps to turn a unsuccessful moon mission into a victory of an engineering, is dead. He was 97 years old.

NASA said in a statement on Thursday in Illinois, Lake Forest, Illinois.

“Jim’s character and determined courage helped our nation reaches the moon and turned a potential tragedy into a tremendous success,” he said. “Even when celebrating their success, we mourn his passage.”

Lovell, one of NASA’s most traveling astronauts in the first decade of the agency, flew four times – Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 – two Apollo flights, returned the earth.

In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first person to fly to the moon and the first to leave the moon. They could not land, but they put the US in front of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers said that the crew of the Mon, a world, had saved the Christmas Arafi of the world from Moon, a world of the world, and the Christmas of the Mürettebat from Genetis from a turbulent 1968.

But the big rescue task was still coming. This was a sad Apollo 13 flight in April 1970. Lovell had to be the fifth man walking a month. However, the service module of Apollo 13, which carries Lovell and two other people, experienced a sudden oxygen tank boom on the way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spent four cold and humid days as a lifeguard in the congested moon module.

“What I want most people to remember [that] In a sense, this was very successful, ”Lovell said during the 1994 interview.” [Nasa] employee. “

Lovell, a retired navy captain, known for his calm attitude, told a NASA historian that his brush affected him with death.

Orum I’m not worried about crises anymore, ”he said in 1999. When there was a problem, “I say, ‘I could go back in 1970. I’m still here. I’m still breathing.’ So I’m not worried about crises.

And the popular 1995 film Apollo 13, the re -narration of the task Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert brought a renewed fame – partly Lovell’s “Houston, we have a problem” film, a statement that he does not fully say.

In total, the Lovell flyed four space mission-and until the Skylab flights in the mid-1970s, the world record for the longest time with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds.

In Apollo 8, Lovell told the oceans and land masses of the land. Ine What I continue to imagine is that if I were a lonely traveler from another planet, what would I think about the earth at this altitude, or if I think you will get older, ”he said.

Launius said that this mission may be as important as the historical Apollo 11 Mooning, a flight that makes it possible by Apollo 8.

However, if historians see Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 as the most important of the Apollo missions, Lovell was at his last mission that was immortalized by Tom Hanks.

Lovell, Haise and Swigert’s Apollo 13 crew, in April 1970, went to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded from the Earth 200,000 miles from the spaceship.

Lovell remembered that it was the most frightening moment in all this thing ”. Then the oxygen began to escape and “We didn’t have solutions to return home”.

Nasa said to the historian, “We knew we were in a deep, deep trouble.”

Four -fifth of the road to the Moon NASA scrapped the task. Suddenly, his only goal was to survive.

Lovell’s “Houston, we had a problem” – Swigert’s variation of a comment that has previously made radio – became famous. In Hanks’s version, “Houston, we have a problem.”

What has emerged in the next four days has caught the imagination of the nation and the world, which was largely indifferent to the fact that it seems to be a routine task until then.

While Lovell commanded the spacecraft, the flight director Gene Kranz directed hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in an angry rescue plan.

The plan included astronauts from the serving module with oxygen bleeding rationalization of decreasing oxygen, water and electricity. Using the Moon Module as a lifeguard boat, they swung around the moon, targeted the Earth and ran home.

By solving the most intense pressure problems that may come to mind in a cool way, he became astronauts and the crew hero on the ground. In the process of transforming into a routine life struggle, the entire flight crew created one of NASA’s best moments of NASA, and nine months ago with the marches of Buzz Aldrin.

Launius showed the world that they could really handle terrible problems and revive them, La said Launius.

Lovell is a 1995 interview for a story on Mission’s 25th anniversary, the loss of the opportunity to walk in the month.

In 1995, Bill Clinton accepted Lovell when he gave the Congress Medal.

Although Lovell was once disappointed, he said that he never walked in the month, and that the mission itself and the fact that we have gained victory for certain disasters gives me a deep sense of satisfaction ”.

And Lovell clearly understood why this unsuccessful task provided much more than the fact that Apollo 13 reached its goal.

“Going to the Moon, if everything is going well, it is like following a cookbook. This is not a big deal ..

James A Lovell was born on March 25, 1928 at Cleveland. Maryland went to the University of Wisconsin before he was transferred to the US Warfish Academy in Annapolis. The day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife Marilyn married.

Marilyn died in 2023. The survivors contain four children.