Young, John Watts

Related Category: Space Exploration: Biographies

1930–, American astronaut, b. San Francisco. Young served as pilot of Gemini 3 (Mar. 23, 1965), command pilot of Gemini 10 (July 18–21, 1966), command-module pilot of the Apollo 10 lunar-orbit mission (May 18–26, 1969), and commander of the Apollo 16 lunar-landing mission (Apr. 16–27, 1972), during which he became the ninth person to walk on the moon. When he commanded the first orbital test flight of the space shuttle Columbia (Apr. 12–14, 1981), he set a record for the greatest number of orbital spaceflights (five) by an individual. He then went on to break his record by commanding another orbital flight of the Columbia (Nov. 28–Dec. 8, 1983).