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Rusty Schweickart

American - (NASA)

Retired

Date of Birth: Oct. 25, 1935
Age: 89


Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart is an American aeronautical engineer, and a former NASA astronaut, research scientist, U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, as well as a former business executive and government executive. Selected in 1963 for NASA's third astronaut group, he is best known as the Lunar Module Pilot on the 1969 Apollo 9 mission, the first manned flight test of the Lunar Module, on which he performed the first in-space test of the Portable Life Support System used by the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon. As backup Commander of the first manned Skylab mission in 1973, he was responsible for developing the hardware and procedures used by the first crew to perform critical in-flight repairs of the Skylab station. After Skylab, he served for a time as Director of User Affairs in NASA's Office of Applications. Schweickart left NASA in 1977 to serve for two years as California Governor Jerry Brown's assistant for science and technology, then was appointed by Brown to California's Energy Commission for five and a half years, serving as chairman for three. In 1984–85 he co-founded the Association of Space Explorers and later in 2002 co-founded the B612 Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to defending Earth from asteroid impacts, along with fellow former astronaut Ed Lu and two planetary scientists. He served for a period as its chair before becoming its chair emeritus.

Saturn V | Apollo 9

National Aeronautics and Space Administration | United States of America
Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA
March 3, 1969, 4 p.m.
Status: Success
Mission:

Apollo 9 was commanded by James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot Dave Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. The mission tested the LM engines, backpack life support systems, navigation systems, and docking maneuvers.

Low Earth Orbit
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Administrator: Bill Nelson

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA have many launch facilities but most are inactive. The most commonly used pad will be LC-39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.


Electron
Success
2 days, 5 hours ago
Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1B - Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand

Launch of a yet to identified satellite to SSO for an undisclosed customer. The customer is suspected to be Low Earth Orbit communication satellite c…


Falcon 9
Success
2 days, 14 hours ago
Dragon CRS-2 SpX-31
Launch Complex 39A - Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

31st commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station operated by SpaceX. The flight will be conducted under the second Commer…


Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M
Success
2 days, 17 hours ago
Ionosfera-M 1 & 2
Cosmodrome Site 1S - Vostochny Cosmodrome, Siberia, Russian Federation

Ionosfera is a constellation of four ionospheric and magnetospheric research satellites developed by for Roscosmos for the project Ionozond. The s…


H3-22
Success
3 days, 10 hours ago
DSN 3 (Kirameki 3)
Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-2 - Tanegashima Space Center, Japan

DSN 3, also known as Kirameki 3, is a geostationary communications satellite to be used for military communications by the Japanese military.


Soyuz 2.1a
Success
1 week ago
Kosmos 2579 (Bars-M No. 6)
43/4 (43R) - Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russian Federation

Note: Payload identity uncertain. Bars-M is the second incarnation of the Bars project, which was started in the mid 1990ies to develop a success…