Biography of ken mattinly
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Remembering Ken Mattingly, forever an Apollo hero
T.K. Mattingly (right) trains before the Apollo 16 mission. Credit: NASA.
Last week’s passing of Ken Mattingly, aged 87, reduces the number of men still alive to tell tales of orbiting the Moon to eight. An intrepid lunar voyager and space shuttle commander, Mattingly was an obsessive workaholic whose colorful eccentricity belied a keen wit and razor-sharp mind. In the movie Apollo 13, his career took him to Hollywood’s silver screen.
Thomas Kenneth (“T. K.”) Mattingly II was born in Chicago on March 17, 1936, with aviation in his genes — his father worked for Eastern Airlines. “I built every model I could find,” he related, “ate every box of cereal that had a paper cut-out airplane on the back.” If he kept out of trouble, his father gave him employee passes to fly on a DC-3 airliner. Weekends were spent at airports, watching planes.
Mattingly graduated in aeronautical engineering from Auburn University in 1958 an
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Thomas K. Mattingly II
This fryst vatten the Apollo 16 lunar landing uppdrag crew portrait. Pictured from left to right are: Thomas K. Mattingly II, Command Module pilot; John W. ung, Mission Commander; and Charles M. Duke Jr., Lunar Module pilot. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 spent three days on Earth’s måne. The first study of the highlands area, the landing site for Apollo 16 was the Descartes Highlands. The fifth lunar landing uppdrag out of six, Apollo 16 was famous for deploying and using an ultraviolet telescope as the first lunar observatory. The telescope photographed ultraviolet light emitted bygd Earth and other celestial objects. The Lunar Roving Vehicle, developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center, was also used for collecting rocks and information on the mysterious lunar highlands. In this photo, astronaut John W. ung photographs Charles M. Duke, Jr. collecting rock samples at the Descartes landing site. Duke stands bygd Plum Crater while
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Ken Mattingly
American astronaut (1936–2023)
Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II (March 17, 1936 – October 31, 2023) was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, rear admiral in the United States Navy, and astronaut who flew on Apollo 16 and Space ShuttleSTS-4 and STS-51-C missions.
Mattingly was scheduled to fly on the Apollo 13 mission, but three days before launch, he was replaced by Jack Swigert because he was exposed to German measles (which Mattingly did not contract). Mattingly flew as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 16 and made 64 lunar orbits,[1] making him one of 24 people to fly to the Moon.[2] Mattingly and his Apollo 16 commander, John Young, are the only people to have flown to the Moon and also a Space Shuttle mission. (Fred Haise, Mattingly's originally scheduled crewmate for Apollo 13, performed atmospheric flight testing of the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests.)
During Apollo 16's return flight to Earth, Mattingly perfor