NASA to honor Astronaut James Lovell

WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says it will honor astronaut James Lovell Jr. for his contributions to the U.S. space program.

Lovell, 81, will be presented with an Ambassador of Exploration Award during a Friday ceremony at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Lexington Park, Md. He will then present the award to the museum, which will put it on display.

NASA is presenting Ambassador of Exploration Awards to the first generation of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs for realizing America's goal of going to the moon. The award is a moon rock encased in Lucite, mounted for public display. NASA said the rock is part of the 842 pounds of lunar samples collected during six Apollo expeditions from 1969 to 1972.

Lovell, born in Cleveland and raised in Milwaukee, was the pilot for the Gemini 7 mission and the command pilot for Gemini 12. He and fellow crewmen Frank Borman and William Anders were the first humans to leave Earth and travel to the moon during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. On Lovell's fourth mission, he was the commander of Apollo 13.

Biographical information about Lovell is available at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/lovell-ja.html.