Flight Director Glynn Lunney seen in the Mission Control Center during the Apollo 201 test flight on Feb. 26, 1966. The flight was the first test of production Apollo command and service modules and the first launch of the Saturn 1B rocket.
Lunney, who died March 19, 2021, as a flight director for the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission, and was lead flight director for Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, and Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, in NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston. He led the mission control team credited with key actions that made it possible to save three Apollo 13 astronauts aboard a spacecraft disabled on the way to the Moon.
Throughout his career, he was a key leader of NASA human spaceflight operations, beginning as a member of the original Space Task Group at NASA’s Langley Research Center established shortly after NASA was formed to manage America’s efforts to put humans into space. After moving to Houston, the task group eventually became the Manned Spacecraft Center, now NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.