NASA said Friday that James “Jim” Lovell Jr., the U.S. Navy captain who commanded the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission, died on Aug. 7 in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was 97. Lovell’s calm leadership during Apollo 13 in April 1970 turned what could have been a fatal disaster into what he later called a “successful failure.” An oxygen-tank explosion roughly 200,000 miles from Earth forced Lovell and crewmates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise to abandon plans to land on the Moon and improvise a days-long rescue that riveted a global audience and cemented the phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The former test pilot flew four times in space—Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13—accumulating about 715 hours aloft. On Apollo 8 in 1968 he became one of the first humans to orbit the Moon and witness the iconic Earthrise photo, yet he never set foot on the lunar surface. Lovell co-wrote the memoir “Lost Moon,” which was adapted into Ron Howard’s 1995 film “Apollo 13.” Actor Tom Hanks portrayed Lovell, who made a cameo appearance in the movie. NASA praised him as an explorer whose courage and ingenuity continue to inspire new generations of spacefarers.