NASA's Astronauts - Groups 1 to 3 Quiz

Answer: John Glenn

John H. Glenn Jr initially tried to enlist in the US Army Air Corps upon the United States' entry into World War II. However, he was not called, and instead joined the US Navy as an aviation cadet in March 1942. During his flight training in Texas, he transferred to the US Marine Corps, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in March 1943. Having initially started as a transport pilot, he transferred to fighters, and eventually flew 57 combat missions in the Pacific, winning two Distinguished Flying Crosses and ten Air Medals. Following the end of the war, he gained a regular commission in the Marine Corps, before qualifying as a flying instructor. He saw combat service in Korea, where he won two more Distinguished Flying Crosses and eight Air Medals, from which he went on to train as a test pilot.

During his service as a test pilot, he was involved in testing a number of different aircraft, including the new F-8 Crusader fighter. In 1957, while working at the US Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, he planned and undertook the first supersonic transcontinental flight, flying a Crusader from California to New in just under three and a half hours. For this flight, he received a fifth Distinguished Flying Cross, and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, as well as an appearance on the game show "Name That Tune" alongside child star Eddie Hodges. Two years after his transcontinental flight, Glenn became one of the seven aviators to be selected to form NASA's first group of astronauts.

Answer: Delta 7

Following his selection, Deke Slayton began the initial stages of astronaut training. During a centrifuge run in 1959, an electrocardiogram found that his heart was beating erratically, eventually being diagnosed with idiopathic atrial fibrillation. Despite this, he was considered healthy enough to continue flying. As a result, he was selected to serve as the pilot for the second manned orbital flight of Project Mercury, scheduled for launch in May 1962. In keeping with the tradition started by his fellow astronauts, Slayton named his spacecraft - each had suffixed the name with the number 7, to signify the seven astronauts of Group 1, while choosing a name of significance. Slayton elected to name his spacecraft Delta 7, in recognition of his flight being the fourth manned Mercury mission, and Delta being the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.

However, in early 1962, the NASA Administrator, James Webb, ordered an investigation into Slayton's atrial fibrillation, which led to his being examined by a number of both military and civilian doctors. Ultimately, on 15 March 1962, two months prior to the planned launch of Delta 7, Slayton was declared medically unfit, with his place on the flight taken by Scott Carpenter, who named the spacecraft as Aurora 7. Although Slayton's disqualification was initially just for one flight, he was determined to still be at risk, and so had his flight status permanently removed late in 1962. With little chance of flying in space, he instead took up the position of Chief Astronaut and Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, becoming responsible for future crew assignments, recruitment and training.

Answer: First rendezvous of two spacecraft

Wally Schirra assumed command of Gemini 6 as a result of his being named as the backup commander of Gemini 3, following the standard crew rotation of backing up, missing two flights, then becoming a prime crew. The original mission plan for Gemini 6 was to fulfill the requirements of both rendezvous and docking for the first time, both of which were vital elements of a lunar landing mission. The mission, with Schirra alongside Tom Stafford, was scheduled to launch on 25 October 1965, a few hours after the target vehicle, an Atlas-Agena booster, was launched. However, six minutes after the target lifted off, it suffered a catastrophic engine failure and exploded. The lack of a target for rendezvous led to Gemini 6 being scrubbed. However, this meant that there would have been no opportunity to undertake a rendezvous mission until at least early 1966, as the next planned flight, Gemini 7, was to be a long duration mission with no planned rendezvous.

This led to a new mission being planned for Gemini 6 - while the docking would have to be dropped, rendezvous could at least be practised by using Gemini 7 as the target vehicle. Eight days after Gemini 7 was launched, carrying Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a 14-day flight intended to simulate the planned duration of a lunar mission, Schirra and Stafford were launched on the renamed Gemini 6A. At just over five hours into the flight, following three separate engine burns to put them into the correct orbit, Gemini 6A made contact with Gemini 7, with Schirra bringing his spacecraft within 130 feet of the other. For more than four hours, the two spacecraft maneuvered around each other, coming as close as 1 foot, before performing a separation to take them out to 30km during the crews' sleep period. Gemini 6A re-entered the following day, having proven that rendezvous was possible in orbit.

Answer: Ménière's disease

Alan Shepard was the first American in space, when he was launched on 5 May 1961 aboard his Mercury spacecraft, Freedom 7, on a 15 minute suborbital flight. Although he sought to make a second, three-day Mercury flight, which he wanted to use to try and match the Soviet Union for duration, the end of the Mercury program saw this idea dropped in favour of the start of Project Gemini. Shepard was named as the commander of a Gemini crew alongside Tom Stafford, and was unofficially put at the head of the crew rotation to command the first Gemini flight, which was scheduled for 1965. However, in late 1963, Shepard began suffering from dizziness, nausea and vertigo that, despite wanting to keep secret, he had to report it, and was diagnosed with Ménière's disease, a condition of the inner ear caused by fluid build up. Although he took medication, there was no known cure - it would either go away on its own or not. In the meantime, Shepard was removed from flight status, taking up the position of Chief Astronaut instead.

In 1968, Stafford approached Shepard to tell him about Dr William House, an otologist from Los Angeles who had developed a surgical method to cure Ménière's disease. Shepard underwent the surgery in May 1968, which was successful, and led to his being restored to flight status the following year. He was immediately returned to the flight rotation, and given a seat on the next immediately available spaceflight, which was Apollo 13, scheduled for launch in early 1970. However, NASA's managers felt that, after so long out, he needed more training time, and so Shepard and his crew were moved to become the prime crew of Apollo 14. Apollo 14 was eventually launched on its lunar landing mission in January, with Shepard becoming the fifth man, and the only member of his astronaut group, to walk on the Moon.

Answer: General Electric

Although Elliot See saw active service as an officer in the United States Naval Reserve, serving as a naval aviator for three years between 1953 and 1956, he was primarily employed by General Electric, which he initially joined in September 1949. Following the end of his naval service, he returned to the company as a flight test engineer. As part of his work, based at Edwards Air Force Base in California, he served as a test pilot for various engine development projects General Electric were conducting, most notably on the J79-8 engine project, which was developing an improved version of the J79 turbojet for use in the Navy's new F4H aircraft (later the F-4 Phantom II).

In 1962, NASA announced the recruitment of a second group of astronauts. Unlike the first group, being a serving military officer was no longer a requirement, which opened up the process to individuals employed in the civilian sector. See was one of two civilians selected, alongside NASA test pilot Neil Armstrong. Both received their first spaceflight assignments when they were selected to form the backup crew for Gemini 5 in February 1965. Although this put them in position to be the prime crew for Gemini 8, See was instead removed and named as the commander of Gemini 9, scheduled for launch in June 1966. However, in February 1966, See and his crew mate Charles Bassett were killed when, on a training trip to St Louis, where their spacecraft was under construction, their aircraft crashed.

Answer: Neil Armstrong

Gemini 8, with Neil Armstrong in command and Group 3 astronaut Dave Scott as the pilot, was planned as a three day flight with a large number of mission objectives related to docking and undocking, a process vital for the upcoming lunar missions. The flight was planned to see Gemini 8 dock and undock from its Agena target vehicle as many as four times, while Scott was to undertake a two-hour EVA, the first to be done since Ed White's pioneering spacewalk on Gemini 4, which was to see him retrieve and activate different experiments on both spacecraft, before retrieving and testing a special Extravehicular Support Pack, which contained extra consumables for an extended EVA, plus an extension to his tether, allowing him to maneuver further away from the spacecraft. In addition, Gemini 8 also included a range of scientific, medical and engineering experiments.

Both the Agena and Gemini 8 were launched successfully on 16 March 1966, with Armstrong successfully undertaking the first successful docking between two spacecraft around 5 hours after launch. However, just after contact between Gemini 8 and the ground was lost (owing there not yet being universal communications coverage), the astronauts noticed that the spacecraft was rolling. Attempts to stop this using Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS) failed, and so they undocked from the Agena. This led to the roll becoming significantly faster, and required Armstrong to use the Reentry Control System to to try and control the situation. Under the mission rules, using the RCS automatically meant they had to return to Earth, and so Gemini 8 was prepared for an emergency landing. Gemini 8 eventually landed in the Pacific 10 hours and 41 minutes after launch. The definitive cause was unknown, but was believed to be a short circuit to one of the OAMS thrusters, that caused it to remain on even after being switched off.

Answer: Skylab

In 1965, John Young became the first astronaut from his group to receive a flight assignment, when he was named as the pilot of Gemini 3, the first manned flight of Project Gemini, alongside Group 1 astronaut Gus Grissom. His place on an early flight put him, according to the standard crew rotation, in line to potentially fly again on one of the later Gemini missions - Young and Grissom were assigned as the backup crew of Gemini 6, before, with Grissom transferred to Apollo to prepare for the first manned flight, Young was named as the commander of Gemini 10, with Michael Collins as the pilot. Again, the fact that he flew a later Gemini mission put Young in a prime spot for one of the early Apollo flights, which came when he was named to the crew commanded by Tom Stafford, which backed up the prime crew of Apollo 7, before serving as the prime crew of Apollo 10.

Young flew to the Moon as the Command Module Pilot of Apollo 10, which again put him in a spot to command his own lunar landing mission down the line. Being given his own crew, which was named as backups for Apollo 13 saw Young named as the commander of Apollo 16, which landed on the Moon in April 1972. At the time, the later Apollo missions were running in parallel with the preparation for the launch of Skylab. Because Young remained with Apollo until the end, subsequently serving as the backup commander of Apollo 17, he was not able to move across to Skylab. As a result, after the completion of Apollo, he moved to the Space Shuttle program, also serving as Chief Astronaut from 1974 onwards. This saw him named as the commander of STS-1, the first space shuttle flight, in March 1978. After STS-1, which launched in April 1981, Young flew in space for the final time as commander of STS-9 in November 1983.

Answer: US Air Force

Although Tom Stafford initially joined the US Navy, and saw service as a midshipman aboard a number of vessels, following his graduation he was selected in a lottery to transfer to the US Air Force, into which he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1952. He completed his initial pilot training in 1953, following which he became a fighter pilot, flying the F-86 Sabre in both the United States and Germany, before applying to the Air Force's Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Having finished first in his class, he remained at Edwards as an instructor, co-writing two of the standard handbooks for use in flight test, before being accepted as part of NASA's second group of astronauts. However, although technically employed by NASA following his selection, he retained his rank in the Air Force.

In 1969, having already flown in space three times, Stafford temporarily assumed the role of Chief Astronaut for a period of two years, overseeing crew selections for the later Apollo and Skylab missions. Having stepped down, he was, in quick succession, promoted to Brigadier General in the Air Force and named the commander of the joint US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz mission, scheduled for 1975. With the launch of the Apollo flight on 15 July 1975, Stafford became the first officer of flag rank to fly in space, on what was his fourth and final spaceflight. After the mission's end, Stafford left NASA and returned to Edwards Air Force Base as commanding officer of the Air Force Flight Test Center, with the rank of Major-General. He eventually retired from the Air Force in November 1979 as a Lieutenant General, the highest rank achieved by any astronaut to that point.

Answer: Dave Scott

Dave Scott was born at Randolph Field, a fighter base near San Antonio, Texas, the son of Tom Scott, a fighter pilot in the US Army Air Corps. As a result of his early experiences, Scott's ambition was to fly in the US armed forces and, in 1950, was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating four years later. Upon his graduation, Scott then volunteered to be commissioned as an officer in the US Air Force - at the time, the Air Force did not have its own officer training academy, and so accepted a quarter of the graduating classes from West Point and the US Naval Academy as its new group of officers each year. Completing his training, Scott served as a fighter pilot in Europe for four years, before becoming a test pilot stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

It was during his time at Edwards that Scott applied to become an astronaut as part of NASA's third group in 1963. Having been selected, his first assignment was to serve as the astronaut representative to the team at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) responsible for developing the Apollo Guidance Computer. However, following the end of Gemini 5, Scott was informed by Deke Slayton, the Director of Flight Crew Operations, that the crew assignment for Gemini 8, which would have been filled by the backup crew of Gemini 5, had been changed. Scott would take the place of Elliot See, who had been named commander of Gemini 9. Although not the first member of his group to receive a crew assignment, Scott was the first assigned to a prime crew, and did so without serving as a backup first.

Answer: Lunar Module Pilot

Fourteen men were selected as part of Group 3 in 1963, of which four - Charles Bassett, Roger Chaffee, Theodore Freeman and Clifton C. Williams - were killed before they could fly in space. While Freeman died in a plane crash in 1964 before he received a flight assignment, and Charles Bassett died in a crash during the final preparations for the flight of Gemini 9, for which he had been selected as the pilot, both Chaffee and Williams had received Apollo crew assignments in the position that came to be termed as "Lunar Module Pilot". Chaffee was assigned to the prime crew of the first manned Apollo flight, that came to be called "Apollo 1", and died in a fire in the spacecraft during a ground test in January 1967, while Williams, who was the backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 9, was killed when the aircraft he was flying crashed in October the same year.

Each of the ten remaining members of Group 3 flew at least one Apollo mission, whether in Earth orbit or to the Moon. Four of them - Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Donn Eisele (Apollo 7), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12) and Dave Scott (Apollo 9) - occupied the Command Module Pilot position, while the other six - Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10), Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7) and Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9) - served in the Lunar Module Pilot role (whether the flight had a Lunar Module or not). Of the members of Group 3 that flew Apollo missions as either a CMP or LMP, two of them - Dave Scott and Gene Cernan - subsequently commanded their own lunar landing missions.