Ken Mattingly

Ken Mattingly
Country:	United States
Organization:	NASA
selected on	April 4th 1966
Calls:	3 space flights
Start of the first space flight:	April 16, 1972
Landing of the last space flight:	January 27, 1985
Time in space:	21d 4h 34min
EVA inserts:	1
EVA total duration:	1h 23min 42s
retired on	June 1986
Space flights
Apollo 16 (1972) STS-4 (1982) STS-51-C (1984)

Thomas Kenneth "Ken" Mattingly II (born March 17, 1936 in Chicago , Illinois ) is a former American astronaut .

Studies and military service

Mattingly attended Miami Edison High School in Miami and then studied aerospace engineering at Auburn University in Alabama . After graduating, he joined the US Navy in 1958 and was trained as a pilot. He served on the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt , where he first flew the Douglas A-1 "Skyraider" and later the Douglas A-3 "Skywarrior" . He was studying at the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1966 when he was selected for the astronaut program.

Apollo

Mattingly applied to NASA and was introduced to the public on April 4, 1966 with the fifth astronaut group. As a specialty, he should especially take care of the development of space suits for the moon landing.

At the end of 1966 he was assigned to the support crew of the third manned Apollo flight , which at that time was still running under the project name Mission E and was later numbered as Apollo 8 . Mattingly worked as a liaison spokesperson ( Capcom ). He was also part of the support crew on the historic Apollo 11 mission and was in touch with the team as Capcom.

Since he was one of the experts on the Apollo spacecraft , he was assigned as a CM pilot for the Apollo 13 mission on August 6, 1969 , without having previously been on a replacement team. A few days before take-off, on April 6, 1970, it turned out that the lunar module's replacement pilot, Charles Duke , was infected with rubella and Ken Mattingly was not immune to it. To eliminate the risk of Mattingly falling ill while on the moon flight, he was replaced on April 9 by reserve pilot John Leonard Swigert .

Mattingly did not get rubella and was instrumental in the rescue operation when the Apollo 13 astronauts were in mortal danger due to an explosion on board. In the Hollywood film about this mission ( Apollo 13 , 1995) he was played by Gary Sinise .

Mattingly made his first space flight on April 16, 1972, as a pilot of the Apollo 16 command module under the command of John Young . On the flight back from the moon Mattingly left the spaceship Casper for extravehicular activities , which was not provided for Apollo. 13

On the last Apollo flight ( Apollo 17 ) in December 1972, Mattingly served again as Capcom.

Space shuttle

After the completion of the Apollo lunar program, Mattingly took over the management of the Astronaut Office Support for the future space shuttle Space Shuttle in 1973 . In 1978 he became a technical assistant for test flights to the manager of the space flight test program. At the end of 1979 he became head of the working group for launch and reentry in the Astronaut Office, until he started preparing for his active work as an astronaut again in April 1981.

For the shuttle test flights STS-2 in November 1981 and STS-3 in March 1982 he was assigned as a substitute commander. From June 27 to July 4, 1982 Mattingly completed his second space flight. He commanded the STS-4 test flight on the Columbia space shuttle . Henry Hartsfield was on board as the pilot .

From 1983 Mattingly headed a NASA division that worked closely with the US Department of Defense .

Mattingly was scheduled to command flight STS-10, which was scheduled to launch a reconnaissance satellite for the US Department of Defense in November 1983, but was canceled due to delays. Another flight ( STS-41-E ), of which Mattingly was to be in command in July 1984, had to be canceled.

On January 24, 1985 Mattingly was able to carry out its third space flight with the Shuttle Discovery . He was in command of the STS-51-C mission in a Department of Defense deployment that resulted in multiple satellites being deployed.

On these three space flights, Mattingly spent 21 days in space.

According to NASA

In June 1986 Mattingly left NASA and returned to the US Navy, where he worked as a satellite programs manager. He left the Navy in 1990 with the rank of rear admiral and went into industry.

He worked on the space station program at Grumman in Reston until he moved to General Dynamics in San Diego in 1993 , where he took on responsibility for the Atlas rocket . His business was sold to Martin Marietta and incorporated into Lockheed Martin , where Mattingly temporarily led the development of the X-33 space shuttle .

Since 1998 Mattingly has been managing director of the Rocket Development Company in Los Alamitos , California , a company that focuses on low-cost delivery systems. At the same time, he has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the parent company Universal Space Network since July 1999.

Ken Mattingly has been divorced twice and has a son from his first marriage.

Web links and receipts

Commons : Ken Mattingly  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Short biography of Ken Mattingly at spacefacts.de
• NASA biography of Ken Mattingly (PDF)
• Biography of Ken Mattingly in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)