James Lovell, the American astronaut, died on Thursday, August 7, at the age of 97. He will forever be remembered as the man who never walked on the Moon. Of course, that could be said for billions of Homo sapiens, but no one fits the description quite as perfectly as Lovell. He was, in fact, the only astronaut in the Apollo program to travel twice to the Moon without ever setting foot on it: the first time, because the mission did not require it, and the second, because circumstances decided otherwise.

Lovell was born on March 25, 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio, the only child of a Czech-born mother and a Canadian father who died in a car accident in 1933. Though the family struggled financially, young Lovell was able to study engineering at university thanks to a program run by the US Navy, in which he enlisted. He became a pilot for the Navy, and by the mid-1950s had performed over 100 landings on aircraft carriers. The next step: test pilot in 1958, a position that was the natural springboard for future astronauts.

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