American astronaut Captain Jim Lovell has died at the age of 97. He was known for leading the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission that became a story of ingenuity and survival.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -American astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the failed 1970 mission to the moon that nearly ended in disaster but became an inspirational saga of survival and the basis for the hit movie "Apollo 13," has died at the age of 97, NASA said on Friday.

Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97.