Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden, who circled the moon alone in 1971 while his two crewmates test-drove the first lunar rover, died Wednesday at age 88.
Worden died in his sleep at a rehab center in Houston following treatment for an infection, said friend and colleague Tom Kallman.
“Al was an American hero whose achievements in space and on Earth will never be forgotten,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a statement. He also praised Worden for his appearances on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” to explain his moon mission to children.
Worden flew to the moon in 1971 along with David Scott and Jim Irwin. As command module pilot, Worden remained in lunar orbit aboard the Endeavour while Scott and Irwin descended to the surface and tried out NASA’s first moon buggy.
Scott is one of four moonwalkers still alive. Irwin died in 1991.
“‘Line of Grey, Be Thou at Peace!’ Godspeed Al,” tweeted Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, borrowing from their West Point alma mater.
Once his moonwalking crewmates were back on board and headed home, Worden performed the first deep-space spacewalk — nearly 200,000 miles from Earth. He inspected the service module’s science instrument bay and retrieved film. His foray outside lasted just 38 minutes.
Worden said of the mission: “Now I know why I’m here. Not for a closer look at the moon, but to look back at our home, the Earth.”
Apollo 15 was Worden’s only spaceflight. He was in NASA’s fifth astronaut class, chosen in 1966. He retired from NASA in 1975 and went to work for various aerospace companies.
Of the 24 men who flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, only 11 are still alive.
Born and raised on a farm in Jackson, Mich., Worden graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 1955 and was commissioned in the Air Force. He attended test pilot school.
“As I was growing up, aviation was not really something that was foremost in my mind,” Worden said in a 2000 oral history for NASA. “From the age of 12 on, I basically ran the farm, did all the field work, milked the cows, did all that until I left for college.”
While in the Air Force, “I began to realize that flying was kind of my game. It was a thing that I was very attuned to.”
Going to the moon was “like flying an airplane,” Worden said in the NASA oral history. “It’s a skill that you learn. It takes some knowledge. It takes some analytical ability if something goes wrong, but outside of that it’s like driving a car.”
Working as a senior aerospace scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., was more intellectually stimulating, he noted.
In his 2011 book “Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey to the Moon,” Worden wrote that NASA was leery about young children watching a rocket launch, so he called Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh. Worden, who had three daughters, ended up doing a special show.
”It was so outside of what most astronauts did, many thought I was crazy. Astronauts liked to think they were super jocks who hunted, fished, drank and chased girls. We didn’t do kiddies’ shows.”
A list of children’s questions eventually led to Worden’s 1974 children’s book, “I Want to Know About a Flight to the Moon.”
After returning from the moon, all three Apollo 15 astronauts became embroiled in a controversy over a few hundred stamped postal covers that flew with them to the moon. The astronauts planned to sell them to help pay for their children’s education, Worden said in the NASA oral history.
Worden said he assumed the stamped covers were on the official flight manifest, but wasn’t sure now that they ever were. All this resulted in “quite a flap.”
1/15
Kobe Bryant, Kirk Douglas, Mary Higgins Clark and more.
(Los Angeles Times)
2/15
Swedish actor
Max von Sydow starred in several Ingmar Bergman movies, including “The Seventh Seal” (above, at left) and “The Virgin Spring,” then built a varied body of U.S. work that included the 1973 horror blockbuster “The Exorcist.” In a career that began in 1949, his rich repertory included Jesus Christ, clergymen, pontiffs, knights, conquerors, villains and the devil incarnate. He was 90.
(File photo)
3/15
Former Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak crushed dissent for decades until the 2011 Arab Spring movement drove him from power. During his presidency, which spanned nearly 30 years, he protected Egypt’s stability as intifadas roiled Israel and the Palestinian territories, the U.S. led two wars against Iraq, Iran fomented militant Shiite Islam across the region and global terrorism complicated the divide between East and West. He was 91.
(Sameh Sherif / AFP/Getty Images)
4/15
Xerox researcher Larry Tesler pioneered concepts that made computers more user-friendly, including moving text through cut, copy and paste. In 1980, he joined Apple, where he worked on the Lisa computer, the Newton personal digital assistant and the Macintosh. He was 74.
(AP)
5/15
Mathematician
Katherine Johnson calculated rocket trajectories for NASA’s early space missions, including Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space, and John Glenn’s orbits around the planet. In 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, and the next year was portrayed in the film “Hidden Figures.” She was 101.
(NASA/Bill Ingalls )
6/15
Ski industry pioneer Dave McCoy transformed a remote Sierra peak into the storied Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. Over six decades, it grew from a downhill depot for friends to a profitable operation of 3,000 workers and 4,000 acres of ski trails and lifts, a mecca for generations of skiers and boarders. He was 104.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
7/15
Veteran TV personality Orson Bean brought his wit to “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth,” guest-starred on variety shows and bantered with talk show hosts such as Johnny Carson and Mike Douglas. Later in his career, he starred in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and “Desperate Housewives” while becoming a mainstay of Los Angeles’ small theater scene. He was 91.
( Sean Smith)
8/15
Screen icon
Kirk Douglas brought a clenched-jawed intensity to an array of heroes and heels, receiving Oscar nominations for his performances as an opportunistic movie mogul in the 1952 drama “The Bad and the Beautiful” and as Vincent van Gogh in the 1956 drama “Lust for Life.” As executive producer of “Spartacus,” Douglas helped end the Hollywood blacklist by giving writer Dalton Trumbo screen credit under his own name. He was 103.
(Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)
9/15
“Queen of Suspense”
Mary Higgins Clark became a perennial best-seller, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Her sales topped 100 million copies, and many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She was 92.
(Associated Press)
10/15
Fred Silverman was the head of programming at CBS, where he championed a string of hits including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “All in the Family,” “MASH” and “The Jeffersons.” Later at ABC, he programmed “Laverne & Shirley,” “The Love Boat,” “Happy Days” and the 12-hour epic saga “Roots.” He was 82.
(Associated Press)
11/15
Kobe Bryant was just 18 when he started playing for the Lakers, but by the end of his 20-year career — all of it as a Laker — the Black Mamba was a five-time world champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist and 18-time All-Star. His post-basketball career included an Oscar for the animated short “Dear Basketball” and a series of children’s books that became New York Times bestsellers. He was 41.
(Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE / Getty Images)
12/15
Former California
Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark Jr. represented the East Bay in Congress for 40 years. The influential Democrat helped craft the Affordable Care Act, the signature healthcare achievement of the Obama administration, and also created the 1986 law best known as COBRA, which allows workers to stay on their employer’s health insurance plan after they leave a job. He was 88.
(Associated Press)
13/15
News anchor
Jim Lehrer appeared 12 times as a presidential debate moderator and helped build “PBS NewsHour” into an authoritative voice of public broadcasting. The program, first called “The Robert MacNeil Report” and then “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report,” became the nation’s first one-hour TV news broadcast in 1983. Lehrer was 85.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
14/15
Terry Jones was a founding member of the Monty Python troupe who wrote and performed for their early ’70s TV series and films including “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in 1975 and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in 1979. After the Pythons largely disbanded in the 1980s, Jones wrote books on medieval and ancient history, presented documentaries, wrote poetry and directed films. He was 77.
(Associated Press)
15/15
Rush drummer
Neil Peart was one of the most accomplished instrumentalists in rock history. Peart often cited swing-era drummers Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich among his primary inspirations, although he also credited Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and John Bonham as major influences. He was 67.
(Andrew MacNaughtan)
Let's block ads! (Why?)
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiY2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmxhdGltZXMuY29tL29iaXR1YXJpZXMvc3RvcnkvMjAyMC0wMy0xOC9hbC13b3JkZW4tYXBvbGxvLTE1LWFzdHJvbmF1dC1jaXJjbGVkLW1vb24tZGllc9IBAA?oc=5
2020-03-19 00:54:51Z
52780673363034
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar