John Young
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in Gemini, Walter SchirraClickety-Clack: Remembering the Misfortune of Gemini VI, OTD in 1965
OTD in 1965, #GeminiVI crewmen Wally Schirra & Tom Stafford were ready for the first rendezvous in space. But their rendezvous target had other ideas. More
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Somebody Get a Camera: Remembering the Deployment of Hubble, OTD in 1990
Thirty years ago today, the hands of humans and robots parted company with the Hubble Space Telescope for the final time before it began its momentous voyage to explore the Universe. Almost two decades in the making—and a half-century in the human imagination—Hubble had weathered financial and technical woes as it weaved its way from […] More
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in Moon, Apollo, Space, Jim Lovell‘Our Finest Hour’: Remembering Apollo 13, 50 Years On (Part 4)
By the middle of April 1970, Project Apollo—America’s effort to land a man on the lunar surface—had reached one of its most decisive points of crisis. As described in last weekend’s AmericaSpace history feature, an explosion rocked the Apollo 13 spacecraft, halfway to the Moon, destroying one oxygen tank, puncturing the second, and effectively crippling […] More
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‘Bored to Tears’: Remembering Apollo 13, 50 Years On (Part 1)
By the spring of 1970, six months had passed since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin triumphantly fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Their steps on the Sea of Tranquility remain the most remarkable accomplishment of our species, yet the extent to which […] More
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in Space‘Down Among ‘Em’: Remembering Apollo 10, 50 Years On (Part 4)
Fifty years ago, this spring, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 circled the Moon, marking humanity’s second voyage to our closest celestial neighbor. Their spacecraft had many of the provisions needed to execute a landing—a Command and Service Module (CSM), which they had nicknamed “Charlie Brown”, and a Lunar Module (LM), “Snoopy”—but on this “F […] More
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‘We Have Arrived’: Remembering Apollo 10, 50 Years On (Part 3)
Four hours after a bone-jarring launch from Cape Kennedy—marking the first-ever space mission to originate from Pad 39B—and an equally rattling ride through Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI), on 18 May 1969 the crew of Apollo 10 were finally on their way to the Moon. Their mission to lunar orbit would clear the final hurdles before humanity’s […] More
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“We Didn’t Know the Questions”: Remembering Apollo 10, 50 Years On (Part 2)
Snoopy, the little black-and-white dog from the Peanuts comic strip, was everywhere at NASA five decades ago, this month, as Apollo 10 and its three-man crew—Commander Tom Stafford, Command Module Pilot (CMP) John Young and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Gene Cernan—prepared for their launch to the Moon. Snoopy had become the mascot for a mission […] More
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in SpaceTo ‘Simply’ Land: Remembering Apollo 10, 50 Years On (Part 1)
Five decades ago, this week, Americans could almost taste the Moon, as the days drew closer to landing a human on its dusty surfaceand honoring a national pledge from the late President John F. Kennedy. Already, in December 1968—on only the second manned flight of the Apollo spacecraft—U.S. astronauts had triumphantly voyaged to lunar orbit and in […] More
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‘To Fly the First One’: 40 Years Since the First Space Shuttle Crews
In the coming months, the first crews will be named for the maiden voyages of America’s first wholly-new piloted spacecraft in more than a generation. Since September 2014, Boeing and SpaceX have been working to develop their CST-100 Starliner and Crew Dragon vehicles for a series of critical test-flights, before committing both to International Space […] More
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The Astronaut’s Astronaut: Remembering John Young
Astronaut John Young, who died recently at age 87, reduces yet further the number of veteran Moonwalkers who are still with us. Only five men—all in their 80s—can now claim to have experienced the one-sixth gravity of the lunar surface and to have glimpsed its desolate landscape through their space suit visors. For more than four decades, […] More
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in NASA, Space, astronaut, space shuttleRemembering John Young, an ‘Astronaut’s Astronaut’, Gone at Age 87
John Young, one of only 12 humans to have walked the dusty surface of the Moon, one of only three of mankind’s sons to have traveled twice to lunar distance, the only astronaut to fly aboard Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle, and the first person to record six space missions, has died, aged 87. […] More
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Intruders in a Foreign Land: 45 Years Since Apollo 16 Almost Didn’t Land on the Moon (Part 2)
Forty-five years ago, this week, Apollo 16 landed late on the surface of the Moon…and a carefully choreographed flight plan was instantly thrown into disarray. As outlined in yesterday’s AmericaSpace history article, a problem had been detected with the big Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine aboard the Command and Service Module (CSM) and only after […] More
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