Astronaut Jim Lovell, who guided the Apollo 13 mission safely back to Earth in 1970, has died aged 97. When there was an explosion onboard the spacecraft while it was 200,000 miles from Earth Jim sent a message to the NASA Mission Control Centre, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” As they were closing in on the moon the crew of Apollo 13, Jim, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, needed to stir tanks containing vital oxygen and hydrogen. It should have been a routine procedure but the command module, Odyssey, shuddered. Oxygen pressure fell and power shut down; the spacecraft was disabled. The mission had to be aborted but the big challenge was how the astronauts could get back to Earth safely?

Jim and Fred began to work frantically to boot up the lunar module, Aquarius, which was not supposed to be used until they got to the moon. It had no heat shield, so could not be used to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere but would keep them alive until they got there. I was one of the millions of people around the world who watched on television their hazardous return to Earth. Temperatures in the lunar module fell to freezing, food and water were rationed. It was days before they limped back to the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere. Then they climbed back aboard the Odyssey and prayed the heat shield had not been damaged. The team on the ground held its breath until the parachutes deployed and the crew landed safely in the Pacific Ocean.

A few years earlier Jim Lovell had been in command of Gemini 12, with Buzz Aldrin, on a mission to the Moon. After 68 hours they fired the engines and the spacecraft slid silently behind the Moon and out of radio contact with Mission Control. As they re-emerged from the darkness they saw “Earthrise” and took a photograph of our beautiful planet, fragile and shining in the desolation of space. Jim read from the Book of Genesis to the people on Earth, “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

Jim had amazing experiences during his life on Earth and lived to a great age but now he is in an even more amazing place – he is in heaven with God, his heavenly Father, and his Saviour Jesus. Jim now sees Jesus as he is and is like him and is enjoying eternal happiness. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”