Susan Lovell: Where is Jim Lovell’s daughter now?

Susan Lovell is the daughter of NASA astronaut Jim Lovell. Susan Lovel’s father is one of the many US astronauts who helped begin the succession of Space flights in the 1960s. He also had is also one of the first three men to fly to and orbit the Moon. Jim is best known for his command of the Apollo 13 Mission and the very famous reporting of the mechanical problems aboard that flight with his words “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Aside from being a national asset, Jim is also a father. Who is Jim Lovell’s daughter Susan?

Susan Lovell: Bio Summary

Susan Lovell was born on July 14, 1958, in the United States of America. As of 2023, she is 64 years old. Retired NASA astronaut Jim Lovell and his lifelong wife Marilyn Lovell has 4 children and Susan is the third child. The other three children of the family are Jeffrey Lovell, Jay Lovell, and Susan Lovell. The siblings grew up together on the East and West coasts but spent most of their time in Houston, Texas because of her father’s Job.

ALSO, READ; Jim Lovell and his wife Marilyn Lovell’s Love Story

Susan Lovell was 12 during the Apollo 13 malfunction

The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no.2 in the service module. The explosion ruptured a line or damaged a valve in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly. “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing“, Jim Lovell said when they got the first view of the damage that had been caused by the explosion. He was the Commander.

On April 17, the command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down on the target. The mission was dubbed a “successful failure” because all of the crew members survived a catastrophic accident. At the time of this malfunction, Jim Lovell’s daughter Susan was just 12 years old.

Recalling, the very day of the malfunction, Susan Lovell told the Chicago Tribune-“Everything became really hush-hush. They had these little boxes they would put in our house so you could hear the men talking in space, but they turned those off. They wouldn`t let anybody call us because of what was happening. They didn`t want to upset the family, I guess, while the crisis was happening“

 Susan narrated seeing her elder sister Barbara running upstairs, and she had her Bible and she couldn`t understand. `My sister never, never pulled out the Bible before on any of these flights.” Her Mother and her friends also sat around the coffee table and a guy from their church also came over and they were having communion. All this seems weird to her making her run outside crying but was consoled by her mother who then told her the truth of the matter. Susan conceded that the entire family was relieved when they learned that Jim and the entire crew had made it safe.

ALSO, READ; Who is Barbara Lovell, Jim Lovell’s daughter?

As the daughter of a famous Apollo 13 astronaut, Susan Lovell doesn`t recall her childhood as being much out of the ordinary. She played with Barbie dolls, was on the swim team, went shopping at the mall with friends, watched her father`s spacecraft lift off from Cape Canaveral, and was given the hero`s welcome with tickertape parades when her family flew to New York.

“They weren`t all normal kinds of things, but they seemed like normal to me,” said Susan Lovell, Per Chicago Tribune‘s report ”Honestly, I probably didn`t appreciate those things as much then as I might now. I was just a typical child who didn`t like to be moved around here and there, being told what to wear . . . but that was what we were supposed to be doing, and it seemed normal to us.“

ALSO, READ; Jay Lovell is Chef- Everything about Jim Lovell’s son

Her father flew four missions from the time she was 5 until she was 11. Her father’s danger during those early space missions never occurred to her. “I never knew that he had a dangerous kind of job. I always felt like what he was doing was his job. A lot of dads would get up in the morning and go on a business trip. My dad would get up, go away and go up into space.“- She told the outlet. “I think my mother was definitely under a lot of stress that entire time, but to be honest with you, as a child I never saw that.“

Where is Jim Lovell’s daughter Susan Lovell now?

Per Chicago Tribune, Susan is a wife and a mother. She is a mother of three children. Susan and her family also lived with the other Lovells in Lake Forest until recently moving to Houston because of her husband`s job. Susan Lovell said “NO” when asked whether she thinks the risk her father Jim Lovell placed on their family was unfair.

ALSO, READ; Jeffrey Lovell: Where is Jim Lovell’s son now?

“Even if it put our family in jeopardy, he was doing something for the country, for the people, for the world.” – Susan Lovell told Chicago Tribune– “It would be unfair if he had put us in jeopardy over something illegal. But I think wanting to do something like making advancements in space or doing something for people, I don`t think that`s wrong. …I`m very proud of him and his accomplishments, just having the desire to do something like that, being motivated enough to do something really spectacular.” Per IMDB, Susan has been credited for the documentary Lost Moon: The Triumph of Apollo 13 and the Tv movie Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back.