The American astronaut Jim Lovell died on Thursday (7) at the age of 97 in Lake Forest, Illinois. The family confirmed the information on Friday (8), noting that Lovell was captain of the US Navy, Pilot, Officer, Leader and Space Explorer.
Lovell entered history as a commander of Apollo 13, a mission of NASA launched on April 11, 1970 and aimed at landing on the moon. However, about 56 hours after takeoff, over 320,000 kilometers from Earth, an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks caused energy loss and severe faults in the life support system.
With the command module damaged after the explosion of an oxygen tank, loly and colleagues Jack Swigert and Fred Haise had to take shelter in the lunar module, designed for only two people. In addition to facing the intense cold, lack of water and food, they had to improvise filters to remove carbon dioxide following NASA guidelines. With no possibility of landing on the moon, the crew, under the command of Lovell, used the severity of the satellite to return safely to the Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. By the feat, they received President Richard Nixon’s presidential freedom medal.
“We are immensely proud of your life and your achievements, marked by your legendary leadership in space exploration,” the family said in a statement. “But for all of us, he was a father, grandfather and the leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our hero. We will miss his unshakable optimism, his sense of humor and the way we could believe that we could do the impossible.”
NASA lamented death, noting that “Jim’s inabalable character and courage helped our nation reach the moon and transformed a potential tragedy into a success of which we learned a lot”.
In addition to Apollo 13, Lovell participated in three other space missions: Gemini 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8 – the latter, in 1968, was the first manned mission to orbit the moon. During that year’s Christmas broadcast, he read excerpts from the Genesis book of the Bible to millions of people scattered throughout 64 countries.
Born on March 25, 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio, James Arthur Lovell Jr. grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and from an early age was interested in rockets and astronomy. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1952 and accumulated more than 7,000 hours of flight as a Navy pilot. It was selected to NASA in 1962, after being refused in the first selection for medical reasons.
Lovell retired in 1973, but remained active as a speaker, businessman and writer, being co-author of the book Lost Moonwhich inspired the movie “Apollo 13”Starring Tom Hanks. Married for more than seven decades to Marilyn Gerlach, who died in 2023, Lovell leaves four children, 11 grandchildren and seven great -grandchildren.
