Astronaut Don Peterson, first shuttle spacewalker, dead at 84

quote:

---

Astronaut Donald Peterson, who trained for a classified military space station program before becoming one of the first people to spacewalk from the space shuttle, has died.

Peterson's death on Sunday (May 27) at age 84 was noted by the Association of Space Explorers, a professional society for individuals who have flown in space.

"So sad to report that we have lost another member of the astronaut family," wrote the association on its Facebook page on Monday. "Fair skies and tailwinds, Don."

Peterson transferred to NASA in September 1969, two years after he was chosen by the U.S. Air Force among its third group of candidate pilots to crew the planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). The clandestine reconnaissance platform was canceled however, before it could be launched, leading to Peterson and several of his fellow MOL trainees joining NASA's astronaut corps.

"You might think that there was a lot of— I mean, a bunch of screening and testing and all that. As far as I know, there was none," Peterson recounted in a NASA oral history in 2002. "There were fourteen people who were crew on the MOL program, and they took the seven youngest people."

"I am sure they did that because they figured it would be a while before we'd get a chance to fly," he said.

Arriving at the civilian space agency in the midst of the Apollo program, Peterson in fact waited 14 years for his opportunity to fly into space, ultimately being named to the maiden crew of the space shuttle Challenger.

On April 4, 1983, Peterson lifted off aboard the winged orbiter, together with STS-6 commander Paul Weitz, pilot Karol "Bo" Bobko and fellow mission specialist Story Musgrave. The five-day flight included deploying the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-1) to support communications between the space shuttle in Earth orbit and mission control on the ground.

---