John Young

Born in San Francisco in 1930, John Watts Young built a career that bridged the gap between naval aviation and deep space exploration. He earned his degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology before serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. His transition to test pilot saw him shatter multiple world time-to-climb records, a skill set that eventually landed him a spot with NASA in 1962 as part of Astronaut Group 2. Young's flight history reads like a checklist of early space milestones. He piloted the very first crewed Gemini mission in 1965 and commanded Gemini 10 two years later. In 1969, he served as command module pilot for Apollo 10, becoming the first human to orbit the Moon alone while his crewmates descended closer to the surface. Three years after that, he took command of Apollo 16, spending three days on the lunar surface exploring the Descartes Highlands alongside Charles Duke. This made him the ninth person to walk on the Moon. His achievements did not end at the lunar boundary. Young commanded STS-1 in 1981, the inaugural flight of the Space Shuttle program aboard Columbia, and later led STS-9 in 1983. He remains the only astronaut to have flown in four distinct types of NASA spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo command module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Space Shuttle. Additionally, he stands alone as the only individual to both walk on the Moon and command a Space Shuttle mission. After serving as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1974 to 1987, Young retired from NASA in 2004 following 42 years of service. He passed away in January 2018 at the age of 87.[edit]