NASA Remembers Astronaut Richard Truly

In 1965, Truly became one of the first military astronauts selected to the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program and transferred to NASA as an astronaut in August 1969. He served as capsule communicator for all three Skylab missions in 1973 and the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. He was pilot for one of the two-astronaut crews that flew the 747/Space Shuttle Enterprise approach and landing test flights during 1977. He then was backup pilot for STS-1, the first orbital test of the Shuttle. His first space flight was as pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-2), significant as the first piloted spacecraft to be reflown in space. His second flight (STS-8) was as commander of Space Shuttle Challenger, the first night launch and landing in the Shuttle program.

The former Shuttle astronaut served as the first commander of the Naval Space Command in Dahlgren, Virginia, established Oct. 1, 1983.

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly returned to NASA to become NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Flight on February 20, 1986. In this position, he led the painstaking rebuilding of the Space Shuttle program. This was highlighted by NASA’s celebrated “return to flight” on September 29, 1988, when Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on the first Shuttle mission in almost 3 years.
He served as NASA’s eighth Administrator from February 1989 to 1992.

Credit: NASA
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