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Jim Lovell
The Observer
|August 17, 2025
Apollo 13 astronaut whose phrase 'Houston, we've had a problem' epitomises an understated but remarkable life
The crew of Apollo 13 had been awake for nine hours; it was their third day in space. The Saturn V rocket carrying them to the moon had lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 11 April 1970. Since the moon landings made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - with Michael Collins in the command module - in July 1969, space travel had come to seem routine. When the crew of Apollo 13 made the traditional TV broadcast from space, none of the major US television networks transmitted it.
A mundane task was ordered by mission control in Houston: a stir of the oxygen tanks. However, unbeknownst to anyone on the ground or any of the three astronauts - commander Jim Lovell, along with Fred Haise and Jack Swigert - one of the tanks had a manufacturing flaw. At nearly 200,000 nautical miles from Earth, the flick of a switch caused an explosion that put the astronauts in mortal peril - and caught the world's attention as an extraordinary drama unfolded in outer space.
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