Tom Hanks pays tribute to Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell | US news
Apollo 13 astronaut 13 Jim Lovell received a tribute from Tom Hanks, the actor who gave him life in a winning film of the Oscars and said that he had become places that most would not dare.
“There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others in places where we would not irresh,” said Hanks about Lovell in a sincere Instagram tribute published after the announcement of the death of the astronaut. “Jim Lovell, who for a long time had gone further in space and longer than any other person on our planet, was this kind of guy.”
Hanks portrayed Lovell in the 1995 Apollo 13 film. Directed by Ron Howard and win Academy Awards for the best film editing and the best sound, the film represented the Lunar Mission Ratée which almost cost Lovell and its crew their life in 1970.
Apollo 13 was intended to be the third landing on the moon to the NASA crew. But during the mission of the American space agency, inhabited by Lovell and its astronauts colleagues John Swigert and Fred Haise, a oxygen tank in the service module exploded around 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) of the earth.
Lovell informed the mission control: “Houston, we had a problem.” Hanks then immortalized the line in the film, which slightly changed the sentence to “Houston, we have a problem”.
With their power and survival systems is paralyzed, the crew was forced to abandon their lunar landing and to use several engine burns to toll the distant side of the moon, putting a course on earth. About three days after the explosion, they splashed safely in the South Pacific, concluding what has become known as the “successful failure” of the Apollo program.
“His many trips around the earth and until the moon’s iron was not made for wealth or celebrities, but because these are challenges such as what feeds the course of life,” wrote Hanks on Friday of Lovell. “And who better than Jim Lovell to make these trips.”
“On this night of a full moon, he passes – to the heavens, to the cosmos, to the stars. God accelerates you, during this next trip, Jim Lovell”, reads the end of the homage.
Lovell died Thursday at 97 in Lake Forest, Illinois, said NASA. The cause of death was not immediately released.
He made a brief cameo in Apollo 13 as captain of USS Iwo Jima, the navy ship which recovered the crew after splash. The film was nominated for a total of nine Oscars, including the best film.
Hanks played in Apollo 13 alongside actors Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan and the late Bill Paxton.
