James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday.

American astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the failed 1970 mission to the moon that nearly ended in disaster but became an inspirational saga of survival and the basis for the hit movie "Apollo 13," has died at the age of 97,

Once America's most experienced astronaut, Apollo 13's Jim Lovell, who died at 97, was the first to visit the moon twice.