Apollo 13 & Ken Mattingly

Ken Mattingly did not fly with Apollo 13
Write about his NASA career after this mission

In 1972, Ken got the chance to fly with Apollo 16 as a command module pilot. It was two years after Apollo 13 came back to Earth. Apollo 16 was the tenth manned space flight mission and he flew with John Young and Charles Duke. During the mission, Ken performed the extravehicular activity to collect the film and date packages from the module. He was the outside of module for about one hour for this activity. In total, he spent 126 hours on the lunar orbit. After his mission, he received the NASA distinguished service medal.

After he returned to Earth with Apollo 16, Ken involved in the space shuttle development project. In 1982, he got on the space shuttle named Columbia with Henry. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He and Henry did a lot of experiments during the flight. He got on another flight in 1985.

Hit total time in space is 21 days 4 hours and 34 minutes and retired from NASA in 1985. He worked at several private sectors and is now working at System Planning and Analysis in Virginia.

Apollo 13 - the Ken Mattingly story

Ken Mattingly did not fly with Apollo 13.  Write about his NASA career after this mission.

After the mission, Ken Mattingly flew on the Apollo 16 as Command Module Pilot from April 16 to 27, 1972.  Apollo 16 was assigned to collect samples from the lunar highlands near the crater Descartes.  Ken carried out an extravehicular activity to retrieve film and data packages from the science bay on the side of the service module.  Apollo 16 accomplished all major objectives although the mission was terminated one day early due to concern over several spacecraft malfunctions.

After the turn to Earth, Ken worked as head of astronaut office support to the STS (Shuttle Transportations System) program and technical assistant for flight test to the Manager of the Orbital Flight Test Program.  He flew on the STS-4 (the fourth and final orbital test flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia) as the pilot from June 27 to July 4, 1982 and completed 112 orbits of the Earth.  He saluted President Ronald Reagan after the landing.  Then he also flew on the STS-51-C (the first Space Shuttle Department of Defense) to deploy a modified Inertial Upper Stage vehicle from the Space Shuttle Discovery from January 24 to 27, 1985.

After those missions, he retired from NASA in 1985.  He logged 7,200 hours of flight time.  In his career at NASA, he received twelve awards like the NASA Distinguished Service Medal which was the highest award.