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In early April 1970, Mr. Mattingly was in his car when a breaking news story came over the radio: Jack Swigert He replaced him as command module pilot on the flight to the moon.
“I just pulled over to the side of the road and sat there for a while,” Mattingly recalled in a oral history of nasa. “If this is a joke, it’s very well done, but I don’t think it’s a joke.”
The astronaut had been exposed to German measles by Charles Duke, backup pilot on the flight. Pre-flight blood tests showed that Mattingly lacked immunity to the disease. NASA doctors feared she might get sick while in space.
Left on the ground while Swigert, James Lovell and Fred Haise took off to walk on the moon, Mattingly was relegated, in his words, to “fifth wheel” status in the mission operations center.
“I was really feeling very depressed, very sorry for myself,” he said in the NASA oral history.
His companions consoled him by staying away from him.
“The good thing is that no one said anything,” Mattingly said. “They knew better. “They just didn’t do it.”
On the third day of the mission, an explosion on board cut off electricity and oxygen to the command module. For the next four days (the window in which he could have contracted measles, but he never did), Mr. Mattingly strategized with NASA staff on plans to bring the crew home safely.
At Ron Howard’s House 1995 film “Apollo 13” Actor Gary Sinise played Mr. Mattingly playing alone for hours in a simulator testing a plan for astronauts to retreat to the Apollo lunar module before returning to the command module for landing.
Mattingly said the film “overembellished” his role, and acknowledged that others helped him. His comrades praised his contributions, as did NASA.
“He stayed behind and made key decisions in real time to successfully bring home the injured spacecraft and crew of Apollo 13,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. statement after Mr. Mattingly’s death.
Two years after helping bring Apollo 13 home, Mattingly served as the command module pilot for Apollo 16, NASA’s penultimate lunar mission. While astronauts Duke and John Young explored the moon, Mr. Mattingly stayed in lunar orbit conducting experiments and taking photographs.
On the way back to Earth, Mattingly went on a spacewalk to collect film canisters and other materials.
He also found his wedding ring, which had gone missing earlier on the mission.
“I usually found that I could find things after a long period of time: they would build up in the air filters,” he recalled. “But she never showed up.”
With the hatch open, Duke said, “Look at that.”
“And there was my wedding ring floating out the door,” Mattingly recalled. “I grabbed it and we put it in our pocket. We had gazillion chances to one.”
Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II was born in Chicago on March 17, 1936, and grew up in Hialeah, Florida, near Miami. His father worked for Eastern Airlines as a mechanic and supervisor for 41 years and his mother was a homemaker.
Father and son were master paper airplane builders and tested them in a park. now named after the astronaut.
“They used to spend hours working on those planes and talking about what it would be like to fly,” Mr. Mattingly’s mother said. said the Miami-Herald. “In those days, we didn’t even dream of flying into space.”
Mr. Mattingly studied aeronautical engineering at Auburn University, graduating in 1958. That same year he entered the Navy and soon became a naval aviator.
In 1966, Mattingly, known for being quiet and protective of his private life, was one of 19 astronauts selected into NASA’s fifth generation of space explorers. His first space flight was aboard Apollo 16. He also served as commander on space shuttle missions in 1982 and 1985.
After logging 504 hours in space, Mattingly retired as a rear admiral and worked in the private sector for many years, primarily for aerospace companies.
He is survived by his wife, Kathleen Ruemmele Mattingly, and a son, Thomas K. Mattingly III.
The news that Mr. Mattingly was being removed from the Apollo 13 flight did not sit well with the other astronauts on the mission, especially Lovell.
“How long is the incubation period of this thing?” he asked the flight surgeon, according to his 1994 book ““Lost Moon” co-written with Jeffrey Kluger.
The answer: 10 days to two weeks. Lovell did the math. Mattingly would be healthy at takeoff and upon reaching the Moon.
“So what is the problem?” Lovell asked the flight surgeon. “If you start to get a fever when Fred and I are on the surface, you can have all that time to get over it. If you don’t feel better by then, you can sweat it out on the flight home.”
After all, Lovell concluded, “I can’t think of a better place to get measles than a nice, cozy spaceship.”
