On, NASA reached a pivotal milestone in America’s race to the Moon with the first launch of an Apollo-Saturn IB rocket, known as AS-201, from Cape Kennedy—today’s Cape Canaveral.

James 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.Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA ...