Tom Hanks has shared a tribute to James A. Lovell, the astronaut he portrayed in the 1995 feature “ Apollo 13 .” Lovell died Thursday at the age of 97. The film, directed by Ron Howard , starred Hanks as Lovell and dramatized the Apollo 13 lunar mission, which faced an explosion after launching and forced NASA scientists to improvise solutions to return its crew safely to Earth.

“There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others to the place we would not go on our own. Jim Lovell , who for a long while had gone farther into space and for longer than any other person of our planet, was that kind of guy,” Hanks wrote in a tribute shared on his social media platforms. “His many voyages around Earth and on to so-very-close to the moon were not made for riches or celebrity, bu

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