Reuters
Apollo, Gemini astronaut James McDivitt dies at age 93
James McDivitt, a former U.S. astronaut who commanded a few of NASA’s earliest and most ambitious missions in space, died in his sleep last week at age 93, NASA said in a press release on Monday night. McDivitt, who was chosen for NASA’s second astronaut class in 1962, was the commanding pilot for the U.S. space agency’s Gemini 4 mission in 1965 and Apollo 9 in 1969, a mission that helped pave the way in which for the primary human lunar landing. The astronaut and retired U.S. Air Force test pilot died “peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his family and friends in Tucson, Arizona,” NASA said in a press release.