By Bayla Rothschild, Staff Writer
Navy pilot, astronaut and American hero James Arthur (Jim) Lovell Jr. passed away on August 7, 2025 at the age of 97. Lovell was the first person to go to space four times, and he held the record for most time spent in space until the Skylab missions in 1973. He is still the only person ever to visit the moon twice but not land on it.
Lovell was born on March 25, 1928, and his father, James Arthur Lovell, died when Lovell was five years old. Lovell and his mother, Blanche (Masek) Lovell, then moved to Milwaukee, where he lived until the end of his teenage years. During Lovell’s early years, he had already started to express interest in space exploration and travel. As a teen, he built a rocket with a friend using gunpowder which ended with it blowing up in the air.
After high school, Lovell went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for two years and then went to the U.S. Naval Academy, which he graduated from in 1952. He became a naval aviator who flew various jets from carriers. He later was a naval test pilot, where he tested fighter and other types of aircrafts.
In 1962, Lovell was recruited by NASA to begin its astronaut training program. His first trip to space was in December 1965 on the Gemini 7 mission, where he orbited the Earth with Lt. Col. Frank Borman. Their spacecraft was a part of the first rendezvous of two manned spacecrafts, which would become a critical maneuver for many later space missions. His second mission to space was with Buzz Aldrin in November 1966 on Gemini 12, where they performed 59 orbits of the Earth over a course of four days.
While Lovell participated in two important Gemini missions, they were not his crowning achievements as an astronaut. One of his most important missions was the historic Apollo 8 mission. Apollo 8, which took place from December 21 to 27 of 1968, saw Frank Borman, William Anders and Jim Lovell become the first humans to go to the moon, orbit it and see the moon’s far side. The three astronauts gave a TV broadcast on Christmas Eve of 1968, while they were in lunar orbit, at which point they read the first verses of Genesis describing the creation of the Earth, as they became the first people to ever see the Earth rising over the lunar surface. This mission paved the way for many other important missions to space, including the Apollo 11 mission, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to ever land on the moon.
Though Apollo 8 was incredibly important for the development of space travel, Lovell’s most famous and final space flight was his role as captain on Apollo 13. The goal of the Apollo 13 mission, which took place from April 11 to 17 of 1970 and was the third trip aiming to land on the moon, was to land in and explore the Fra Mauro area of the moon. However, various issues, including a major one in the oxygen tank, made the goal impossible.
Once the astronauts on board realized one of the oxygen tanks had blown up, Jack Swiggert delivered and then Lovell repeated one of the most famous lines in all of space history: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” The NASA team on the ground worked tirelessly with the astronauts to make sure they got home safely. The astronauts used the Lunar Module (the part of the spacecraft designed to land on the moon) in order to make it home safely. After much fear, the astronauts landed in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. In the years since the events of Apollo 13 transpired, the mission is now considered to be a “successful failure” since so many things went wrong and the astronauts still came home alive. Additionally, the mission renewed America’s waning interest in the space program. For his part in the mission, Lovell was awarded various awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970 and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1995.
In March 1973, Lovell retired from the Navy and from that point on he pursued various business ventures until his final retirement in 1991. In 2023, Lovell’s wife Marilyn Lovell died. The couple is now survived by their four children, Jeffrey, Susan, James III and Barbara, as well as numerous grandchildren.
Jim Lovell pushed the boundaries of human achievement during his time as a naval pilot and his time participating in record-setting missions with NASA. While his role on Apollo 13 cemented his place in history, he accomplished so many other important things throughout his life. Lovell leaves behind a legacy that will continue to inspire generations of future explorers and innovators.
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