Former NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, who flew to the moon before leading the first international space mission carried out by the United States and Russia, has died at the age of 93.Stafford’s death on Monday (March 18) came after an extended illness, according to Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma.”This nation has lost one of its great heroes,” said Ary in a call with collectSPACE.com “We are so shocked and saddened by his passing. It’s just hard to say because he was bigger than life.”Related: Apollo-Soyuz astronaut reflects on changing U.S.-Russia relations in space a man in a white spacesuit poses with a globeA member of NASA’s second class of astronauts selected in 1962, Stafford made four flights into space. His contributions to space exploration continued far beyond his career as an astronaut, up until the time of his death.”Today General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heavens which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as a peacemaker in Apollo-Soyuz. Those of us privileged to know him are very sad but grateful we knew a giant,” said Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, in a statement.Two for twoStafford’s first flight assignment was canceled while he and Gemini 6 mission commander Walter “Wally” Schirra were sitting on the launch pad. Set to lift off on Oct. 25, 1965, the two astronauts were tasked with performing a rendezvous with the upper stage of an Atlas-Agena rocket, but their target never reached orbit.”We could hear it thunder off down the pad,” said Stafford in a 1997 NASA oral history interview. “When the Agena lifted off, they had made some changes to have an oxidizer fuel lead-in change, and it did it wrong, and the thing lifted off and blew [up] over the Atlantic Ocean.”NASA managers quickly made new plans to launch Schirra and Stafford on an alternate Gemini 6A mission to rendezvous with the Gemini 7 spacecraft crewed by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.”We’d never done that before, had two spacecraft go,” said Stafford.This time, Stafford narrowly missed a second scrub and a possibly much worse outcome. a man in a white spacesuit with a glass-domed helmet sits in a cramped spacecraft cockpitOn Dec. 12, 1965, eight days after the …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnFormer NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, who flew to the moon before leading the first international space mission carried out by the United States and Russia, has died at the age of 93.Stafford’s death on Monday (March 18) came after an extended illness, according to Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma.”This nation has lost one of its great heroes,” said Ary in a call with collectSPACE.com “We are so shocked and saddened by his passing. It’s just hard to say because he was bigger than life.”Related: Apollo-Soyuz astronaut reflects on changing U.S.-Russia relations in space a man in a white spacesuit poses with a globeA member of NASA’s second class of astronauts selected in 1962, Stafford made four flights into space. His contributions to space exploration continued far beyond his career as an astronaut, up until the time of his death.”Today General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heavens which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as a peacemaker in Apollo-Soyuz. Those of us privileged to know him are very sad but grateful we knew a giant,” said Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, in a statement.Two for twoStafford’s first flight assignment was canceled while he and Gemini 6 mission commander Walter “Wally” Schirra were sitting on the launch pad. Set to lift off on Oct. 25, 1965, the two astronauts were tasked with performing a rendezvous with the upper stage of an Atlas-Agena rocket, but their target never reached orbit.”We could hear it thunder off down the pad,” said Stafford in a 1997 NASA oral history interview. “When the Agena lifted off, they had made some changes to have an oxidizer fuel lead-in change, and it did it wrong, and the thing lifted off and blew [up] over the Atlantic Ocean.”NASA managers quickly made new plans to launch Schirra and Stafford on an alternate Gemini 6A mission to rendezvous with the Gemini 7 spacecraft crewed by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.”We’d never done that before, had two spacecraft go,” said Stafford.This time, Stafford narrowly missed a second scrub and a possibly much worse outcome. a man in a white spacesuit with a glass-domed helmet sits in a cramped spacecraft cockpitOn Dec. 12, 1965, eight days after the …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
