Enlarge / Apollo commander Tom Stafford (left) with Soyuz commander Alexei Leonov through the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.
Former NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, a three-star Air Pressure normal recognized for a historic handshake in area with a Soviet cosmonaut practically 50 years in the past, died Monday in Florida. He was 93.
Stafford was maybe probably the most achieved astronaut of his period who by no means walked on the Moon. He flew in area 4 occasions, serving to pilot the primary rendezvous with one other crewed spacecraft in orbit in 1966 and taking NASA’s Apollo lunar touchdown craft on a closing take a look at run earlier than Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon in 1969.
By his personal account, one of many best moments in Stafford’s profession got here in 1975, when he commanded the ultimate Apollo mission—to not the Moon however to low-Earth orbit—and linked up with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Soviet cosmonauts. The Apollo-Soyuz Take a look at Mission (ASTP) planted the seeds for a decades-long partnership in area between the USA and Russia, culminating within the Worldwide House Station, the place US and Russian crews nonetheless work collectively regardless of a collapse in relations again on Earth.
“Immediately, Basic Tom Stafford went to the everlasting heavens, which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut in addition to a peacemaker within the Apollo-Soyuz mission,” mentioned NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson. “These of us privileged to know him are very unhappy however grateful we knew a large.”
In keeping with a report in The New York Occasions, Stafford’s spouse, Linda, mentioned he had not too long ago been identified with liver most cancers.
No false strikes
Stafford was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, on September 17, 1930. He was a baby of the Mud Bowl and dreamed of turning into a pilot from the time he was in grade college. After graduating with honors from the US Naval Academy, Stafford switched companies and joined the Air Pressure, the place he skilled as a fighter pilot.
He attended the Air Pressure’s Experimental Take a look at Pilot Faculty at Edwards Air Pressure Base, California, then turned a take a look at pilot and teacher. He authored textbooks and flight manuals utilized by later lessons of take a look at pilots, a few of whom additionally went on to develop into astronauts.
Commercial
In 1962, NASA chosen Stafford as one among 9 take a look at pilots for the company’s second class of astronauts. Inside two years, NASA assigned Stafford to fly on the primary flight of the Gemini spacecraft, the two-man capsule designed to show spacewalk methods, rendezvous, and docking, key capabilities to future Apollo flights to the Moon.
However Stafford’s commander on Gemini 3, Alan Shepard, was grounded for well being causes. NASA opted to swap them for the mission’s backup crew, and Stafford needed to wait to fly on Gemini 6 just a few months later.
That mission, which was supposed to try the primary docking between two spacecraft in orbit, did not get off to an auspicious begin. Commander Walter “Wally” Shirra and Stafford have been presupposed to information their Gemini spacecraft to a linkup with an unpiloted goal automobile known as an Agena, which might launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, about 90 minutes earlier than Gemini 6, which sat on a distinct launch pad a few miles away.
“We may hear it roar off the pad, and 90 minutes later, when it got here throughout the Cape, we have been going to go,” Stafford recalled in a 2015 oral historical past interview with NASA. The launch failed, and the Agena goal automobile didn’t make it into orbit. So Gemini 6 was grounded.
Inside just a few weeks, NASA officers devised a brand new flight plan for Gemini 6. This new mission, known as Gemini 6A, would rendezvous with the Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965, lower than two months after their launch was scuttled because of the Agena failure. This would not obtain the objective of bodily docking two spacecraft in orbit, however it could get shut, permitting NASA and its crewmen to show two capsules may fly in formation whereas orbiting the Earth.
This was a necessary functionality NASA needed to show out with a purpose to meet President John F. Kennedy’s objective of touchdown astronauts on the Moon by the top of the Sixties.
“You bought to recollect, the entire thing, we’re constructing this huge constructing on the Cape, with the enormous Saturn V (rocket), the lunar module, command module, all based mostly on doing a rendezvous across the Moon,” Stafford mentioned. “No one had ever performed one. That was crucial. All the pieces was based mostly on rendezvous.”