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. He was 97. Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, died in Illinois, his family announced. Lovell, 97, flew on three other NASA missions.

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