Beginning his career as a Naval officer and aviator, T. Mattingly became one of the select individuals chosen for the Apollo Space Program in He was responsible for the development of the lunar space suit and back-pack, and served on the support crews for Apollo 8 the first lunar orbit and Apollo 11 the first lunar landing. This Day in History: Astronaut T. All Rights Reserved. As a result, he missed the dramatic in-flight explosion that crippled the spacecraft.
The swapout from Apollo 13 placed Mattingly on the crew that would fly Apollo 16 April 16—27, , the fifth manned lunar landing mission. The crew included John W. Duke, Jr. Lunar Module Pilot. The mission assigned to Apollo 16 was to collect samples from the lunar highlands near the crater Descartes.
Twenty-six separate scientific experiments were conducted both in lunar orbit and during cislunar coast. Major emphasis was placed on using man as an orbital observer, capitalizing on the human eye's unique capabilities and man's inherent curiosity.
During the return leg of the mission, Mattingly carried out an extravehicular activity EVA to retrieve film and data packages from the science bay on the side of the service module. Although the mission of Apollo 16 was terminated one day early, due to concern over several spacecraft malfunctions, all major objectives were accomplished through the ceaseless efforts of the mission support team and were made possible by the most rigorous preflight planning yet associated with an Apollo mission.
Following his return to Earth, Mattingly served in astronaut managerial positions in the Space Shuttle development program. Hartsfield, Jr. This 7-day mission was designed to: further verify ascent and entry phases of shuttle missions; perform continued studies of the effects of long-term thermal extremes on the Orbiter subsystems; and conduct a survey of Orbiter-induced contamination on the Orbiter payload bay.
Additionally, the crew operated several scientific experiments located in the Orbiter's cabin and in the payload bay. These experiments included the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System experiment designed to investigate the separation of biological materials in a fluid according to their surface electrical charge. It wasn't; the information leaked to the media before Mattingly heard it himself.
Mattingly admitted to being disappointed. But, he said, that feeling quickly evaporated when Apollo 13 suffered a devastating explosion in space on April 13, Very quickly, Mattingly — along with the rest of NASA — put every resource possible into bringing the three astronauts home.
Backup crewmembers generally had no official assignment during flights, which gave Mattingly a free rein, he recalled: "What I had was a ringside seat that nobody could ever imagine, with the authority to walk into anywhere and listen and kibitz, but I had no particular role.
In the space of a few days, the Apollo 13 astronauts moved into the undamaged lunar module and used it as a lifeboat, reoriented themselves in space to get back home, and built an improvised filter to stop a deadly carbon dioxide buildup in the spacecraft. As instructions were sent to the spacecraft, Mission Control debated and discussed and calculated what was best.
The three men returned safely on April 17, Mattingly, who was initially disappointed at missing the flight, had high praise for replacement Jack Swigert 's expertise in the command module. He added that Swigert performed better than he ever could have. If I had been stuck up there, I would have absolutely been a disaster. Mattingly finally made it to the moon himself on Apollo He performed observations and experiments from orbit while his crewmates, John Young and Charles Duke , did plus hours of exploration on the surface.
It was just so impressive. And these things kept coming for the next 10 days. They never stopped," Mattingly said.
0コメント