1928–2025 · NASA astronaut; commander of Apollo 13
James A. Lovell Jr. flew four space missions — Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 — making him the first person to fly to space four times, and one of the few to reach the Moon twice without ever landing on it. As commander of Apollo 13 in April 1970 he brought a crippled spacecraft and its crew home after an oxygen tank exploded 205,000 miles from Earth. He co-wrote the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 with Jeffrey Kluger, which became the basis for the 1995 film that put five slightly wrong words in his mouth forever. He died on 7 August 2025, aged 97.