James Arthur Lovell Jr. (/ˈlʌvəl/ ⓘ LUV-əl; born March 25, 1928) is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer.

[6] After graduating from high school, Lovell attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two years, where he studied engineering under the United States Navy's "Flying Midshipman" program from 1946 to 1948.

[10] He supplemented his meager Navy stipend by working at a local restaurant washing dishes and busing tables, and caring for the university's lab rats and mice on weekends.

[9] While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, the Navy was beginning to make cutbacks in the program, and cadets were under a great deal of pressure to transfer out.

He was designated a naval aviator on February 1, 1954, upon completion of pilot training, and was assigned to VC-3 at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California.

Upon his return to shore duty, he was reassigned to provide pilot transition training for the North American FJ-4 Fury, McDonnell F3H Demon and Vought F8U Crusader.

Lovell found out about the selection from an advertisement that had been placed in Aviation Week & Space Technology, and decided to apply a second time.

[25] A three-person selection panel consisting of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J.

[32] On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it was a low-key event compared to the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before.

[38] Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine.

[43] Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers.

Borman rejected a proposal by Schirra that Lovell and Stafford exchange places, on the grounds that it was hazardous and likely to jeopardize the fourteen-day mission objective through loss of oxygen.

By day thirteen, a warning light was illuminated continuously and it was feared that the cells, which were only giving partial output, might fail completely, and the mission might have to be cut short; tests were carried out in St. Louis that demonstrated that the batteries could sustain them for the remainder of the flight.

Instead, Aldrin, who had written his PhD on the rendezvous, used a sextant to measure the angle between the spacecraft and the Agena, and then calculated the required actions using the onboard computer.

Four days later, Lovell flew to West Point, New York, with Borman in a NASA T-38 for the funeral service for White at the Old Cadet Chapel.

After the service, White was laid to rest in the West Point Cemetery; Lovell served as a pallbearer along with Armstrong, Borman, Conrad, Stafford and Aldrin.

[71] In April 1968, Lovell, along with fellow astronauts Stuart Roosa and Charles Duke, spent 48 hours in command module CM-007A, bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico to test the seaworthiness of the Apollo spacecraft.

[72] The NASA research vessel MV Retriever stood by with technicians and divers,[73] while the astronauts assessed how quickly the spacecraft's flotation devices could right it from the "stable II" (upside down) position.

[75] Construction delays of the first crewed LM prevented it from being ready in time to fly on Apollo 8, planned as a low Earth orbit test.

Lovell used some otherwise idle time to do navigational sightings, maneuvering the module to view stars by using the Apollo guidance computer keyboard.

[79] Sixteen months later, during the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell would have to perform a similar manual realignment under even more critical conditions after the module's IMU had been turned off to conserve energy.

The spacecraft splashed down safely before dawn on December 27 after 147 hours of flight, 4.8 kilometers (2.6 nmi) from the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.

[75] In early 1969, Anders accepted a job with the National Aeronautics and Space Council effective August 1969, and announced he would retire as an astronaut at that time.

Shepard had only recently returned to flight status after being grounded for several years, and Mueller thought that he needed more training time to prepare for a mission to the Moon.

[101] Apollo 13's flight trajectory gave Lovell, Haise, and Swigert the record for the farthest distance that humans have ever traveled from Earth.

[106] Lovell retired from the Navy and the space program on March 1, 1973, and went to work at the Bay-Houston Towing Company in Houston, Texas,[107] taking on the role of CEO in 1975.

[172] About a month after the return to Earth of Apollo 13, Lovell and his crewmates, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, appeared on The Tonight Show with host Johnny Carson.

Lovell's first impression on being approached about the film was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to portray him, given the physical resemblance,[176] but Tom Hanks was cast in the role.

Along with his wife Marilyn, who also has a cameo in the film, Lovell provided a commentary track on both the single disc and the two-disc special edition DVD.

[180] Tim Daly portrayed Lovell in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon,[181] and Pablo Schreiber in the 2018 film about Armstrong, First Man.