Richard Goldstein at The New York Times with some sad news for fans of the early space program or amazing stories in general:
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, before safely returning to Earth in an extraordinary rescue operation, died on Thursday in Lake Forest, Ill. He was 97.
His death was confirmed by his daughter-in-law, Darice Lovell. He lived in Lake Forest.
Captain Lovell, a former Navy test pilot, flew for some 715 hours in space, the most of any astronaut in the pioneering Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs forged by the United States as it vied with the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
He took part in two Gemini missions that orbited Earth and was one of the three astronauts aboard Apollo 8, the first spaceflight to orbit the moon, before he was chosen by NASA for Apollo 13.