Raumfahrt - John Young, ninth astronaut on moon, led first shuttle mission, dies

7.01.2018

John Young, ninth astronaut on moon, led first shuttle mission, dies

— John Young, NASA's longest-serving astronaut, who walked on the moon and flew on the first Gemini and space shuttle missions, has died.

The first person to fly six times into space — seven, if you count his launch off of the moon in 1972 — and the only astronaut to command four different types of spacecraft, Young died on Friday (Jan. 5) following complications from pneumonia. He was 87.

"NASA and the world have lost a pioneer," said NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot in a statement on Saturday. "John Young's storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight; we will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier."

"Young was at the forefront of human space exploration with his poise, talent, and tenacity. He was in every way the 'astronaut's astronaut,'" Lightfoot said.

Selected alongside Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell with NASA's second group of astronauts in 1962, Young flew two Gemini missions, two Apollo missions and two space shuttle missions. He was one of only three astronauts to launch to the moon twice and was the ninth person to set foot on the lunar surface.

In total, Young logged 34 days, 19 hours and 39 minutes flying in space, including 20 hours and 14 minutes walking on the moon.

"I've been very lucky, I think," said Young in a NASA interview in 2004, when he retired from the space agency after 42 years.

Young made the first of his six missions as the pilot on the maiden flight of Gemini, NASA's two-seater spacecraft. Flying with original Mercury astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Young launched on the nearly five-hour Gemini 3 mission on March 23, 1965, putting the new vehicle through its paces while also taking a bite or two from a later infamous corned beef sandwich that he smuggled aboard the flight.

Gemini 3 "was a truly excellent engineering test flight of the vehicle," Young wrote in his 2012 memoirs, "Forever Young."

Young commanded his second spaceflight, Gemini 10, in July 1966. The three-day mission climbed to more than 400 miles (760 kilometers) above Earth to measure the risk posed by radiation, conducted the program's first double rendezvous with two Agena target vehicles and included two spacewalks by pilot Michael Collins.

On the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969, Young became the first person to orbit the moon alone. During the flight, which was a full-up dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing two months later, Young remained on board the command module "Charlie Brown" while his crewmates, Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan, flew "Snoopy," the Apollo 10 lunar module, to within 47,000 feet (14 km) of the moon's surface.

On their return to Earth, Young, Stafford and Cernan set a record for the highest speed achieved by astronauts aboard a spacecraft: 24,791 mph (39,897 km/h) on May 26, 1969.

Young got his chance to walk on the moon in April 1972, as commander of Apollo 16, the fifth and penultimate Apollo lunar landing. Young and Charles Duke landed the "Orion" lunar module in the Descartes highlands for a nearly three-day stay.

"There you are, mysterious and unknown Descartes – Highland plains," described Young, as he took his first steps on the moon.

Exhibiting his dry wit, Young then compared his situation to a Joel Chandler Harris story, adapted for the Disney movie "Song of the South," to express how fortunate he felt to be on the moon.

"I'm sure glad they got ol' Br'er Rabbit here," he remarked, "back in the briar patch where he belongs."

Over the course of three excursions across the boulder-strewn surface, Young and Duke explored more than 16 miles (26 km), becoming the second crew to drive a lunar rover. As they went, they collected 211 pounds (96 kilograms) of moon rocks and lunar soil, which they brought back to Earth with Apollo 16 command module pilot Thomas "Ken" Mattingly.

During their first moonwalk, Young and Duke received word from Mission Control that the U.S. Congress had approved the funding to develop the space shuttle.

"The country needs that shuttle mighty bad," Young said in response. "You'll see."

Although he had no way of knowing it at the time, Young would next make history commanding the first flight of the space shuttle nine years later, almost to the day.

Young and Robert Crippen launched on space shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981. Because of the way the orbiter had been designed, it could not be tested in space without a crew.

"I think if you look at all the things we had to do, flying a winged launch vehicle into space without any previous unmanned test, it probably was very bold," Young told collectSPACE in 2006, on the 25th anniversary of the STS-1 mission.

For two days and six hours, Young and Crippen tested Columbia's systems before returning to Earth like no other orbital spacecraft had done before — with wings, gliding to a touchdown on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California.

"This is the world's greatest flying machine, I'll tell you that," stated Young, as the orbiter came to a wheels stop under his control.

Young's then-record sixth space mission returned him to the commander's seat on board Columbia for the orbiter's sixth mission in November 1983. This time, Young led a crew of five, including the first international astronaut to fly on the shuttle, Ulf Merbold of the European Space Agency (ESA).

STS-9 also marked the the first flight of the European-built Spacelab laboratory, a pressurized module that was mounted inside the orbiter's payload bay. The 10-day mission carried out 72 experiments in astronomy, astrobiology, material sciences and Earth observation.

On Dec. 8, 1983, Columbia made a pre-dawn landing at Edwards, returning Young to Earth for the last time.

John Watts Young was born on Sept. 24, 1930, in San Francisco, California. When he was 18 months old, Young's parents moved, first to Georgia and then Orlando, Florida, where he attended elementary and high school.

Young earned his bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952.

After graduation, he entered the U.S. Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Laws in the Korean War and then entering flight training before being assigned to a fighter squadron for four years.

Young graduated from the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in 1959 and served at the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, where he evaluated Crusader and Phantom fighter weapons systems. In 1962, he set world time-to-climb records to 3,000 and 25,000-meter (82,021 and 9,843-feet) altitudes in the F-4 Phantom.

Young retired from the U.S. Navy with the rank of captain in 1976. Over the course of his flying career, he logged more than 15,275 hours in props, jets, helicopters and rocket jets, including more than 9,200 hours in NASA's T-38 astronaut training jets.

In addition to his own six spaceflights, Young also served on five backup crews, including backup pilot for Gemini 6; backup command module pilot for the second Apollo mission (as slated before the Apollo 1 fire) and Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo launch; and backup commander for Apollo 13 and Apollo 17.

In 1974, Young was named the fifth chief of the Astronaut Office, after serving for a year as the office's space shuttle branch chief. For 13 years, Young led NASA's astronaut corps, overseeing the crews assigned to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the approach and landing tests with the prototype orbiter Enterprise, and the first 25 space shuttle missions.

After the loss of space shuttle Challenger and its seven-person crew in January 1986, Young penned internal memos critical of NASA's attention to safety, a topic he had championed since his days flying Gemini. Young expressed concern over schedule pressure and wrote that other astronauts who had launched on missions preceding the ill-fated STS-51L mission were "very lucky" to be alive.

Young was subsequently reassigned to be special assistant to the director of the Johnson Space Center for engineering, operations and safety until 1996, when he was named the associate director for technical affairs, a position he held until his retirement from NASA on Dec. 31, 2004.

Young was the recipient of many honors for his contributions to space exploration, including the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Rotary National Space Achievement Award, and six honorary doctorates. Young was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988 and Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993.

He was awarded the NASA Ambassador of Exploration in 2005, including a moon rock he assigned for display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and was bestowed the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award from the Space Foundation in 2010. A stretch of Florida State Road 423 that runs through Orlando is named John Young Parkway in his honor.

Young is survived by his wife Susy, two children, Sandra and John, who he had with his first wife, Barbara White, and three grandchildren.

 
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John Young, training for Apollo 16 in December 1971 (NASA)

 
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John Young seen through the hatch window of Gemini 3 (NASA)

 
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John Young jumps and salutes the flag on the moon (NASA)

 
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John Young with the lunar roving vehicle on the moon (NASA)

 
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John Young in Columbia's commander seat during STS-1 (NASA)

 
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John Young, STS-9 commander, on board Columbia (NASA)


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Quelle: SC

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John Young, US astronaut and pioneer, dies aged 87

 

US astronaut John Young, who flew to the moon twice and commanded the first ever space shuttle mission, has died aged 87, Nasa said.

"Today, Nasa and the world have lost a pioneer," agency chief Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. 

Young was the only person to have flown missions on the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programmes.

He also once famously smuggled a corned beef sandwich on to a space flight as a gift for a fellow astronaut.

Young retired in 2004 after a 42-year career. Nasa said he died on Friday following complications from pneumonia.

"But, not content with that, his hands-on contributions continued long after the last of his six space flights - a world record at the time of his retirement from the cockpit."

Born in San Francisco in 1930, Young gained a degree in aeronautical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and then served in the US Navy as a test pilot. 

He was picked as a Nasa astronaut in 1962 and first went into space in 1965 with the Gemini 3 mission.

US Astronauts Robert Crippen (L) and John Young (R) in the flight deck of the space shuttle Columbia before the first shuttle flight at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981Image copyrightAFP
Image captionJohn Young, right, commanded the first shuttle mission in 1981, pictured here with crew member Robert Crippen

It was while orbiting the Earth that he handed the smuggled sandwich to his colleague, Gus Grissom. Nasa later rebuked him for the stunt.

In May 1969 Young was part of the Apollo 10 mission that flew to the moon as a rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing two months later. The crew tested the lander module in lunar orbit without landing it.

Young finally walked on the moon himself in 1972 as commander of the Apollo 16 mission - the ninth of 12 people to have ever set foot on the lunar surface.

He and crewmate Charles Duke gathered rock and soil samples and drove the lunar rover more than 16 miles (26km).

Crew of Apollo 10 (L-R) Eugene Cernan, John Young and Thomas Stafford, at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, 13 May 1969Image copyrightEPA
Image captionYoung, centre, took part in the Apollo 10 mission

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle in 2004, Young recalled: "One-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful. It's not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is."

In 1981, Young commanded the inaugural flight of Nasa's first space shuttle, Columbia. Two years later he became the first person to fly six space missions when he commanded Columbia on the first Spacelab mission.

It was his last journey into space. Young had been due to command a space shuttle flight in 1986 but it was cancelled after the explosion of the shuttle Challenger earlier that year.

US astronaut John Young in 2009Image copyrightAFP
Image captionJohn Young was described by Nasa as its most experienced astronaut
Quelle: BBC
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John Young on the Moon
Jan. 6, 2018
 

NASA Mourns the Passing of Astronaut John Young

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John Young's official astronaut portrait.
Credits: NASA
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Young in Gemini 3
Credits: NASA
John Young and Mike Collins on the USS Guadalcanal
Gemini X astronauts John Young, left, and Mike Collins stand on the deck of USS Guadalcanal following splashdown and recovery on July 21, 1966.
Credits: NASA
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John Young on the Moon, with the Lunar Module and Lunar Rover in the background.
Credits: NASA
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STS-1 crew Young, left, and Crippen
Credits: NASA

Astronaut John Young, who walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 and commanded the first space shuttle mission, died Friday, Jan. 5, 2018, at the age of 87 from complications of pneumonia. Young began his impressive career at NASA in 1962, when he was selected from among hundreds of young pilots to join NASA's second astronaut class, known as the "New Nine."

“Today, NASA and the world have lost a pioneer," acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. "Astronaut John Young's storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight; we will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier.

“John was one of that group of early space pioneers whose bravery and commitment sparked our nation's first great achievements in space. But, not content with that, his hands-on contributions continued long after the last of his six spaceflights -- a world record at the time of his retirement from the cockpit."

“It would be hard to overstate the impact that John Young had on human space flight,” said Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa, a former astronaut herself.  “Beyond his well-known and groundbreaking six missions through three programs, he worked tirelessly for decades to understand and mitigate the risks that NASA astronauts face. He had our backs.”

After hearing President Kennedy's bold proposal in 1961 to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, Young said knew what he had to do.

"I thought returning safely to Earth sounded like a good idea," said Young, who stood on the Moon, drove 16 miles in a lunar rover and spent three nights on the lunar surface. He is the only person to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs and was the first to fly into space six times -- or seven times, when counting his liftoff from the Moon during Apollo 16.

Video: NASA Remembers Moonwalker, Shuttle Commander John Young

Young was born in San Francisco, California. His family moved to Georgia and then Florida, where he lived for most of his childhood along with his younger brother.

As a boy, Young's favorite pastimes were building model airplanes -- the first hint of his passion for aeronautics -- and reading.

"My grandpa taught me how to read," said Young. "I read the encyclopedia when I was five."

His father, a civil engineer, was Young's role model. Young graduated from Orlando High School and then earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Tech, where he graduated with highest honors in 1952.

Following graduation, he joined the Navy and, after a year's service aboard a destroyer, was sent to flight training.

Image GalleryJohn Young

He flew fighter planes for four years, then completed test pilot training and served three years at the Navy's Air Test Center, where he heeded the president's call to go to the Moon.

In March 1965, Young made his first flight as an astronaut, joining Gus Grissom on Gemini 3, the first manned flight of that program. As Young prepared, a sense of obligation overruled excitement or any other emotion.

"We were just thinking about doing the job right," Young said.

Young commanded the Gemini 10 mission in July 1966. He and pilot Mike Collins rendezvoused with two Agena target vehicles, and Collins did a spacewalk to retrieve a micrometeorite detector from one of them.

In May 1969, he served as command module pilot on Apollo 10 and flew all the way to the Moon with crewmates Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan. The crew scouted landing sites from lunar orbit and rendezvoused the lunar module and command module in a full dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing two months later.

Young made a return trip to the Moon as commander of Apollo 16 in April 1972. With Ken Mattingly orbiting above in the command module, Young and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke landed in the Descartes highlands. "The moon is a very nice place," Young said. "When we landed, we were 20 minutes behind. Because time on the Moon was so precious, what I remember most is trying to catch up."

NASA Johnson Space Center Bio: John Young

Young and Duke set up scientific equipment and explored lunar highlands in the rover. The mission returned more than 200 pounds of Moon rocks gathered from three geological outings.

Young's career was full of firsts, none more notable than in April 1981, when he commanded Space Shuttle Columbia on its -- and the Shuttle program's -- maiden flight, STS-1. It was the first time a piloted spacecraft was tested in space without previous unpiloted orbital flights. Young and pilot Robert Crippen accomplished more than 130 flight test objectives during their almost 55-hour mission.

In late 1983 Young commanded STS-9, the first Spacelab mission. During the 10-day flight, the six crewmembers worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts, involved in more than 70 experiments in a range of scientific disciplines. The mission returned more scientific and technical data than all the Apollo and Skylab missions combined.

In addition to his six spaceflights, Young was a member of five backup crews. He's logged thousands of hours of training and flight time, including a total of 835 hours in space.

In early 1973, he became chief of the Space Shuttle Branch of the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center. The following year, Young, who retired from the Navy as a captain in 1976 after 25 years of military service, was named chief of the Astronaut Office, a post he held until May 1987.

Throughout this time, Young remained an active astronaut, eligible to command space shuttle missions.

Young's numerous awards and special honors included the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, three NASA Distinguished Service Medals, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, two Navy Distinguished Service Medals, three Navy Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Georgia Tech Distinguished Young Alumni Award, the Exceptional Engineering Achievement Award and the American Astronautical Society Space Flight Award.

Those are among more than 80 major honors and awards, including four honorary doctorate degrees, Young has received. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988.

"I've been very lucky, I think," Young said at his retirement from NASA in 2004. As to which moment was most memorable, he says simply, "I liked them all."

Astronaut John Young, who walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 and commanded the first space shuttle mission, has passed away at the age of 87. He is the only person to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs and was the first to fly into space six times -- or seven times, when counting his liftoff from the Moon during Apollo 16.
Credits: NASA
Quelle: NASA
 
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