The astronaut Ken Mattingly, who has died aged 87, was probably more famous for his role in the saga of Apollo 13 – the ill-fated 1970 lunar mission, from which he was removed three days before launch – than he was for Apollo 16, on which he made a successful trip to the moon two years later.
Mattingly lost his place as command module pilot on Apollo 13 because he had been exposed to rubella. As a consequence he had to settle for a role within the Houston ground control team, where he helped to power up the stricken Apollo 13 spacecraft after it had broken down.
His work in rescuing the mission was vital. During a two-hour conversation with his replacement, Jack Swigert, who was on board the crippled spacecraft, Mattingly, as Andrew Chaikin detailed in his book A Man on the Moon (1994), “read out every switch setting, every keystroke of the computer, the steps that would bring Odyssey (the command module of Apollo 13) back to life and ready for re-entry”.
Mattingly finally set off for the moon two years later onboard Apollo 16’s command module, Casper (named after the friendly ghost), with John Young and Charles Duke. Their moon landing was delayed by six hours, but the mission was a success. On the way back to Earth, Mattingly – who had remained in orbit during the moon landing – conducted an hour-long space walk to collect film from outside the craft.
Unusually among Apollo astronauts, Mattingly went on to take a post in management with the space shuttle programme. He returned to being a crew member, commanding the fourth and 15th space shuttle missions, on Columbia in 1982 and Discovery in 1985.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, he was the son of Thomas Mattingly, an Eastern Airlines pilot, and his wife, Constance (nee Clarke). The family moved to Hialeah in Florida, where Ken became obsessed with flight. “My toys were all some kind of airplane,” he said. “I built every model airplane I could find.”
Mattingly attended Miami Edison senior high school, graduating in 1954 and, following a familiar path for future US astronauts, he became a keen boy scout, rising to the rank of life scout. After Edison, a US Navy scholarship took him to Auburn University, Alabama, where he graduated in 1958 with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
Mattingly then joined the US Navy as an ensign, the lowest commissioned rank. Having received his wings, he joined Attack Squadron 35, based in Oceana, Virginia. From there he went on to fly Douglas A-1H Skyraider propeller-driven aircraft, from the early supercarrier USS Saratoga.
It was during those years that he witnessed, while airborne, the launch of a rocket into orbit, and was impressed. He began transitioning to jet aircraft and transferred to Sanford, Florida, and Heavy Attack Squadron 11, flying Douglas A-3 Skywarrior jet bombers from the Saratoga’s sister ship, USS Franklin D Roosevelt.
Having failed to get into the naval test school, he secured a place at the Edwards Air Force Base school in California, where he spent, he said, “just an absolutely fun year” before being selected to join Nasa’s fifth astronaut group in April 1966. There he joined the support team for the Apollo 8 mission that orbited the moon at Christmas 1968. Thus it was Mattingly who relayed the message from the mission commander, Frank Borman, as the spacecraft emerged from its voyage on the “dark side” of the moon.
Mattingly’s last-minute sidelining on the Apollo 13 mission was especially disappointing for him given that, although he had been exposed to rubella, he did not become infected. His heroics in Houston on that mission were given prominence in the 1995 movie Apollo 13, in which he was played by Gary Sinise.
During the Apollo 16 mission, which was the penultimate 20th-century lunar voyage, he orbited the moon 64 times, capturing it on film while Young and Duke explored the lunar surface below. On the journey back to Earth, as recorded in Hamish Lindsay’s book Tracking Apollo to the Moon (2001), Mattingly observed: “There’s not a scene on the moon that carries the emotional impact of watching your Earth shrink to a little ball.”
He quit Nasa in 1985 and left the navy the following year with the rank of rear admiral. He subsequently took on a series of jobs in the aerospace industry, including with Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin. He received distinguished service medals from Nasa, the navy and the Department of Defense.
Mattingly is survived by his second wife, Kathleen (nee Ruemmele), and by his son, Thomas, from his first marriage.
• Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II, astronaut, born 17 March 1936; died 31 October 2023
