John W. Young

Astronaut John Young was born September 24th, 1930, in San Francisco, California. He received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952. After graduation, Young entered the United States Navy and served on the destroyer USS LAWS in the Korean War before being assigned to flight training. Young joined NASA in 1962 as an astronaut. His first flight was with Gus Grissom for Gemini 3 in 1965. His second flight was Gemini 10 in 1966.

Apollo 10 was Young’s third flight in 1969 where he served as Command Module Pilot with Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan. During the mission, they orbited the Moon, completed a lunar rendezvous, and tracked proposed moon landing sites. His fourth space flight was Apollo 16 in 1972 with Ken Mattingly and Charlie Duke was a lunar exploration mission where they collected 200 pounds of rocks and drove over 16 miles in the lunar rover.

After the Apollo program, Young went on to fly for the Space Shuttle program and Skylab.