Rusty Schweickart

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Russell Schweickart
Russell Schweickart
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on October 17, 1963
(3rd NASA Group)
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: March 3, 1969
Landing: March 13, 1969
Time in space: 10d 1h 0min
EVA inserts: 1
EVA total duration: 46min
retired on July 1979
Space flights

Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart (born October 25, 1935 in Neptune , New Jersey ) is a former American astronaut and took part in the Apollo 9 mission as a lunar module pilot.

Life

Schweickart attended Manasquan High School. In 1956 he acquired as a fellow his Bachelor degree in aerospace engineering and in 1963 the Master in Aerospace. From 1956 to 1963 he served as a pilot in the United States Air Force and the Air National Guard . He completed 3900 flight hours, 3500 of them in jets.

Astronaut activity

In 1963 he was selected by NASA with 13 other astronauts . He flew into space on March 3, 1969 as a pilot of the lunar module with Apollo 9. Together with James McDivitt (Commander) and David Scott (Command Module Pilot), he tested the Lunar Module (LM) for the first time in Earth orbit . In doing so, u. a. the Lunar Module from the Command Module (CM) to 100 miles and was then docked again. At the beginning of the flight Schweickart suffered from space sickness , so be extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on the fourth day of flying cut are needed: Actually, would Schweickart will shimmy to the hatch of the Apollo command module in order for the event that no coupling of CM and LM possible would be to simulate the transfer in free space. However, this part had to be omitted, so that Schweickart's EVA lasted only 46 minutes instead of the planned more than two hours. On March 13, 1969, after a successful mission, the safe ditching took place . He spent 241 hours in space on his only space flight. Schweickart served as the commander of the backup team for the first Skylab mission before moving to NASA headquarters in Washington, DC on May 1, 1974 .

According to NASA

In 1983 Rusty Schweickart was one of the founders of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE). He is chairman of the “Committee on Near Earth Objects ” of this astronaut association and deals, among other things, with the deflection of asteroids that could threaten the earth.

Schweickart is co-chair of a NASA working group that recommended the establishment of a planetary defense facility in October 2010 . From 2001 to 2011 Schweickart was chairman of the B612 Foundation .

Private

Schweickart is married, has seven children and eleven grandchildren.

Web links

Commons : Rusty Schweickart  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ US Needs a Planetary Defense Office, Report Says foxnews.com, October 21, 2010
  2. ↑ Is the world ready for an asteroid threat? Apollos Schweickart pushes for action universetoday.com, October 14, 2010
  3. ↑ NASA Advisory Council Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense nasa.gov, accessed October 24, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Schweickart, Rusty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schweickart, Russell Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Neptune , New Jersey