Fred W. Haise, Jr.

Astronaut Fred Haise was born in Mississippi, on November 14th, 1933. He received a bachelor’s degree with honors in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1959. Haise was a research pilot at the NASA Flight Research Center and then at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. From 1959 to 1963, he was a research pilot at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. He served as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 8, Apollo 11, and as backup mission commander for the Apollo 16 mission.

Haise was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 13, which launched in 1970, and was programmed for ten days, however, the original flight plan was modified enroute to the moon due to a failure of the service module cryogenic oxygen system. Haise, command module pilot John Swigert, and mission commander James A. Lovell worked closely with Houston ground controllers to convert their lunar module into a lifeboat. All three astronauts survived and were rescued after splashdown.