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astronautix.com Worden


Alfred Merrill Worden Status: Inactive. Trained as: Astronaut. Profession: Pilot. Sex: Male. Marital Status: Married. Children: Three. Birth Date: 07 February 1932. Birth City: Jackson. Birth State: Mississippi. Birth Country: USA. Nationality: American. Group: 1966 NASA Group. Date Selected: 04 April 1966. Departed: 1972. Number of Flights: 1. Total Time: 12.30 days. Number of EVAs: 1. Total EVA Time: 0.63 hours.

NAME: Alfred M. Worden

BIRTHPLACE AND DATE: Worden was born February 7, 1932, in Jackson, Mississippi.

EDUCATION: Bachelor of Science degree in military science from the U.S. Military Academy in 1955. Master of Science degrees in astronautical/aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering from the University of Michigan in 1963.

EXPERIENCE: After graduation, Worden was commissioned in the U.S. Air Force and received flight training at Moore Air Force Base, Texas, and Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. He served as a pilot and armament officer with the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. In 1965 he was graduated from both the Empire Test Pilots School, Farnborough, England, and from the Aerospace Research Pilots School in California. He was an instructor at the latter when NASA selected him as an astronaut in April 1966.

Worden was backup Command Module pilot on Apollo 12. He was then named to the prime crew of Apollo 15, together with Commander David Scott and Lunar Module pilot Jim Irwin. Apollo 15 launched on July 26, 1971, and Worden orbited the moon alone for three days in the command module Endeavour while Scott and Irwin explored a mountainous region on the edge of the Mare Imbrium. Worden remotely photographed the moon's surface with two special cameras mounted outside the ship. On the homeward journey, Worden took the first deep space EVA moving along handrails on the outside of Endeavour to the rear of the Service Module to retrieve film cassettes from the two cameras.

After Apollo 15, Worden was Senior Aerospace Scientist and later Chief of the Systems Studies Division at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. He left NASA in September 1975 to become Vice President of the High Flight Foundation, under his Apollo 15 co-pilot, James Irwin. He later held executive positions with Jet Electronics and Technology and BF Goodrich Corporation before retiring in 1996..


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