James A. Lovell Jr., the American astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 spacecraft on its lunar voyage in 1970 and shepherded it on a perilous four-day journey back to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded, an ordeal that transfixed the world, died Thursay in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was 97.

NASA announced his death in a statement, which did not cite a cause.

Apollo 13, which became the subject of a Hollywood film starring Tom Hanks as Lovell, was one of the U.S. space missions most firmly etched in the public consciousness after John Glenn’s orbit of the Earth in 1962 and the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.

Those earlier flights were resounding triumphs for the space program, securing American preeminence in the Cold War space race with the Soviets. The legacy of Apollo 13 was more c

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