Apollo 13 Commander Dies

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The man behind the iconic phrase “Houston, we have a problem,” has died.

Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell has died at the age of 97.

Lovell was an astronaut on Apollo 13, which had its oxygen tanks explode while in orbit.

Despite the failure, Lovell was able to command the ship back to Earth.

CBS News had more details on Lovell’s death:

Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the famous Apollo 13 mission, has died, NASA announced Friday. He was 97.

Apollo 13, a 1970 flight to the moon, became known as a “successful failure” after the spacecraft experienced an oxygen tank explosion thousands of miles from Earth but managed to safely return home.

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement that Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois. Duffy praised Lovell’s life and work, saying he inspired millions of people.

“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,” Duffy said.

Lovell was the command module pilot for 1968’s Apollo 8 mission, the first to carry humans to the moon and back, though it did not land on the lunar surface.

Tributes poured in on X:

NPR provided an extensive background of Lovell’s legacy:

Jim Lovell, an astronaut best known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13, has died. He was 97.

NASA announced his death Friday and included this statement from his family: “We are enormously proud of his amazing life and career accomplishments, highlighted by his legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight. But, to all of us, he was Dad, Granddad, and the Leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our Hero. 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.”

The Apollo 13 mission almost ended in catastrophe after an explosion crippled the spacecraft and took a herculean effort to bring home the three-astronaut crew.
Lovell’s NASA career was peppered with firsts. His first flight — Gemini 7 in 1965 — set a space endurance record of almost 14 days. After Lovell commanded Gemini 12, he’d flown in space longer than any other person at that point. His next flight, Apollo 8, was the first time humans left Earth orbit.

That flight was the first to go to the moon, entering lunar orbit on Christmas Eve of 1968. As millions listened in, the crew read a passage from the book of Genesis. In a 2014 NPR interview, he said his greatest impression was not looking down at the moon but seeing the Earth from a quarter-million miles away. “Just a small ball,” he said, “blue and white. Like a Christmas tree ball hung in an absolutely black sky. I could put my thumb up and completely hide the Earth. Everything I knew was behind my thumb.”

It was Lovell’s next mission in 1970 — Apollo 13 — during which he uttered one simple but scary phrase: “Houston we’ve had a problem…”



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