James A. McDivitt, who commanded NASA’s first spacewalk missiondied last Friday at the age of 93 in Tucson, Arizona, according to CNN .
“With heavy hearts, we mourn the recent passing of Korean War veteran, former test pilot, aeronautical engineer and NASA astronaut Jim McDivitt. McDivitt was selected to be part of Astronaut Group 2 and later commanded Gemini IV in 1965 and most importantly Apollo 9 in 1969. Rest in peace”NASA said Monday in a message posted on Twitter.
When he joined the Air Force in 1951 as an aviation cadet after pre-college college, James McDivitt had no “never been on a plane, had never taken off”, he said in an interview for NASA’s Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, The New York Times. He then carried out no less than 145 fighter missions during the Korean War, became an Air Force test pilot, and was then selected by NASA in September 1962 as one of nine astronauts of the Gemini program.
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At the controls of Apollo 9
James A. McDivitt commanded the Gemini 4 mission in 1965, during which his best friend and colleague Ed White made history by performing the first American spacewalk in space, recalls The Parisian .
James A. McDivitt went on to serve as commander of the Apollo 9 mission, a crucial mission that would lead to the first man to set foot on the Moon.
Launched in March 1969, the Apollo 9 flight was carried out in Earth orbit to test the lunar module in preparation for the space mission that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon four months later.
If he did not walk on the Moon, he contributed to this epic mission as director of the Apollo 11 operation, the first moon landing. After which he was appointed program general manager for the Apollo missions.
James A. McDivitt retired from NASA and the Air Force as a Brigadier General in 1972 to work in the private sector.