Lovell was a veteran of four spaceflights, including Apollo 13, during which he and his crewmates famously averted disaster.

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.