Mattingly, Thomas Kenneth, II (1936-2023), an American astronaut, piloted the command module Casper on the Apollo 16 space flight in April 1972. He remained in lunar orbit while his fellow astronauts, Charles M. Duke, Jr., and John W. Young, spent 71 hours on the moon. This mission was the fifth moon landing and the first made in the moon’s highlands. During the flight back to Earth, Mattingly took a 62-minute walk in space to retrieve films of the moon from cameras outside the command module.
Mattingly had been named command module pilot for the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970. John L. Swigert, Jr., replaced him after physicians learned that Mattingly had been exposed to rubella.
Mattingly was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 17, 1936. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering at Auburn University in 1958 and entered the Navy that same year. He became a Navy pilot in 1960. In 1966, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chose Mattingly to be an astronaut.
In addition to his Apollo flight, Mattingly flew on two space shuttle missions in the 1980’s. He was the spacecraft commander on the final orbital test flight of the space shuttle Columbia, which was launched in June 1982. In January 1985, he was spacecraft commander on the first Department of Defense mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
After leaving NASA in 1985, Mattingly continued to serve in the Navy. From 1985 to 1989, he was Director of Space and Sensor Systems at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in Washington, D.C. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1989. After leaving the Navy, he held executive positions with several major aerospace companies and founded a rocket development company. Mattingly died on Oct. 31, 2023.
