Ken Mattingly, astronaut who helped bring Apollo 13 home, dies at 87

In early April of 1970, Mr. Mattingly was in his automotive when breaking information came to visit the radio: Jack Swigert was changing him as command module pilot on the moon-bound flight.

“I simply type of pulled over to the facet of the highway and sat there for some time,” Mr. Mattingly recalled in a NASA oral history. “If it is a sensible joke, it’s rather well completed, however I don’t suppose it is a joke.”

The astronaut had been exposed to German measles by Charles Duke, a backup pilot on the flight. Preflight blood checks confirmed Mr. Mattingly lacked immunity to the illness. NASA medical doctors feared he may grow to be sick whereas in house.

Left on the bottom whereas Swigert, James Lovell and Fred Haise blasted off to stroll on the moon, Mr. Mattingly was relegated, in his phrases, to “fifth wheel” standing on the mission operations heart.

“I actually was feeling very down, very sorry for myself,” he stated within the NASA oral historical past.

His colleagues comforted him by conserving their distance from him.

“The good factor was nobody ever stated something,” Mr. Mattingly stated. “They knew higher. They simply didn’t.”

On the third day of the mission, an onboard explosion knocked out energy and oxygen within the command module. Throughout the subsequent 4 days – the window wherein he may have however by no means got here down with the measles – Mr. Mattingly strategized with NASA employees on plans to convey the crew safely dwelling.

In Ron Howard’s 1995 movie “Apollo 13,” actor Gary Sinise portrayed Mr. Mattingly tinkering alone for hours in a simulator testing a plan for the astronauts to retreat to Apollo’s lunar module earlier than shifting again to the command module to land.

Mr. Mattingly stated the film “over-embellished” his function, acknowledging that others helped him. His comrades praised his contributions, as did NASA.

“He stayed behind and supplied key real-time choices to efficiently convey dwelling the wounded spacecraft and the crew of Apollo 13,” NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson stated in a statement after Mr. Mattingly’s loss of life.

Two years after he helped convey Apollo 13 dwelling, Mr. Mattingly served as command module pilot of Apollo 16, NASA’s penultimate moon mission. As astronauts Duke and John Younger explored the moon, Mr. Mattingly stayed behind in lunar orbit conducting experiments and taking pictures.

On the way in which again to Earth, Mr. Mattingly performed a spacewalk to gather canisters of movie and different supplies.

He additionally discovered his marriage ceremony ring, which had vanished earlier within the mission.

“Usually I discovered I may discover issues after a protracted time frame — they’d gather on the air filters,” he recalled. “But it surely by no means confirmed up.”

With the hatch open, Duke stated, “Have a look at that.”

“And there was my marriage ceremony ring floating out the door,” Mr. Mattingly recalled. “I grabbed it, and we put it within the pocket. We had the probabilities of a gazillion to at least one.”

Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II was born in Chicago on March 17, 1936, and grew up in Hialeah, Fla., close to Miami. His father labored for Japanese Airways as a mechanic and supervisor for 41 years, and his mom was a homemaker.

Father and son had been grasp builders of paper airplanes, testing them at a park now named after the astronaut.

“They used to spend hours engaged on these planes and speaking about what it could be prefer to fly,” Mr. Mattingly’s mom told the Miami Herald. “In these days, we by no means even dreamed of flying to house.”

Mr. Mattingly studied aeronautical engineering at Auburn College, graduating in 1958. He was commissioned within the Navy the identical yr and shortly turned a naval aviator.

In 1966, Mr. Mattingly — generally known as quiet and protecting of his personal life — was considered one of 19 astronauts chosen in NASA’s fifth class of house explorers. His first spaceflight was aboard Apollo 16. He additionally served as commander on house shuttle missions in 1982 and 1985.

After logging 504 hours in house, Mr. Mattingly retired as a rear admiral and labored within the personal sector for a few years, primarily for aerospace corporations.

Survivors embrace his spouse, Kathleen Ruemmele Mattingly, and a son, Thomas Ok. Mattingly III.

The information that Mr. Mattingly was being scrubbed from the Apollo 13 flight didn’t sit nicely with the mission’s different astronauts, particularly Lovell.

“How lengthy is the incubation interval for this factor?” he requested the flight surgeon, in keeping with his 1994 guide “Lost Moon,” co-written with Jeffrey Kluger.

The reply: 10 days to 2 weeks. Lovell did the maths. Mr. Mattingly can be wholesome at liftoff and on arrival to the moon.

“Then what’s the issue?” Lovell requested the flight surgeon. “If he begins working a fever when Fred and I are down on the floor, he can have that complete time to recover from it. If he’s not higher by then, he can simply sweat it out on the flight dwelling.”

In spite of everything, Lovell concluded, “I can’t consider a greater place to have the measles than in a pleasant cozy spaceship.”