Jim Lovell (naval pilot and astronaut) - March 1928 to August 2025

Graham's tribute to Jim Lovell ...

The sad news of the passing of Jim Lovell was announced on 7 August 2025.
 
I love this guy – huge achievements, and yet great humility. I have never met him, but from his writings and video interviews he comes over as a very personable and witty man.

Jim Lovell. Credit: Public Domain

His career in the US Navy began in 1952 with his graduation from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he rose to the roles of flight instructor and test pilot. In 1963 he was selected by NASA to participate as an astronaut in the Gemini programme. As the name suggests, this programme involved space flight in a small 2-man capsule, with the objective of learning the operational techiques – especially in-orbit rendezvous – which would enable a successful lunar landing during the follow-on Apollo programme. He flew in December 1965 aboard Gemini 7 with fellow astronaut Frank Borman, which demonstrated the first successful rendezvous (with Gemini 6). He also joined Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin for the final flight of the Gemini series, Gemini 12, in November 1966.
 
His participation in the Apollo programme began in December 1968 with the first lunar orbit mission. This was a big deal for NASA at the time, as no one had ever flown beyond the bounds of Earth’s gravity before. His command of Apollo 13 two years later made big headlines in April 1970, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. His ambition to be a lunar walker was cruelly dashed when the craft’s service module suffered a crippling explosion which ruptured an oxygen tank. The resulting lack of oxygen and power meant that the lunar landing was abandoned, and the crew and the team at mission control had to adopt a great many novel strategies using the lander as a ‘life boat’ to achieve the safe return of the crew (Lovell, Haise and Swigert).
 
Lovell’s involvement in the Apollo 8 mission is often forgotten, overshadowed by his command of Apollo 13. The Apollo 8 mission was the first time that we left ‘cradle Earth’ and went somewhere else (moon orbit in this instance). Also his reading of the opening verses of Genesis from moon orbit on Christmas Eve 1968 - awesome!
 
Lovell remained in NASA, and in 1971 he became a deputy director of the Johnson Space Flight Centre. He retired from the navy and the space programme in 1973 but remained in Houston as a corporation executive until his retirement in 1991. He later moved to Illinois where he opened a successful restaurant in Lake Forest, a city in Lake County, Illinois. 
 
God’s speed Jim Lovell – one of three men who have flown to the moon twice, but this one never got to feel lunar dust beneath his boots.
 
Graham Swinerd
 
Southampton
August 2025