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ROOKIEIn MemoriamNASA
ROOKIEIn MemoriamNASANASA·🇺🇸 United States·Born 1930
Donn Eisele
Command Module Pilot of Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, which restored confidence in the program after the Apollo 1 fire.
260h
Hours in Space
1
Missions
0
EVAs
—
EVA Time
Biography
Command Module Pilot of Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, which restored confidence in the program after the Apollo 1 fire. He died in 1987.
Before NASAU.S. Air Force interceptor pilot and experimental test pilot at Kirtland Air Force Base who logged over 4,200 flight hours, including 3,600 in jet aircraft, and held an M.S. in astronautics from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
Mission Timeline
- Command Module Pilot
Apollo CSM / Saturn IB
Apollo 7
Launch: Oct 11, 1968Landing: Oct 22, 1968Duration: 11 days- First crewed Apollo flight, testing the redesigned spacecraft
Beyond the Mission
Languages
English
Fun fact
After leaving NASA, Eisele served as director of the Peace Corps in Thailand — an unusual second act for a test pilot — and posthumously left behind a candid memoir, Apollo Pilot, published in 2017, in which he described his frustrations and quirky sense of humor during the Apollo program.
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