Edward White II (1930-1967) was an American astronaut and a member of the first astronaut class, known as the \u201cMercury Seven.\u201d White was one of the first Americans to fly in space, and he played a key role in the development of the United States\u2019 space program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
White was born on November 14, 1930, in San Antonio, Texas. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and later received a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan. After serving in the Air Force, White was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June 1965, White became the first American to perform a spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission. During the spacewalk, White spent over 20 minutes outside of the spacecraft, maneuvering himself using a handheld thruster gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
White was also a member of the Apollo 1 crew<\/a>, which was scheduled to be the first manned mission of the Apollo program. However, a fire broke out in the spacecraft during a ground test, and White and his fellow crew members, Gus Grissom<\/a> and Roger Chaffee<\/a>, died in the accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n White\u2019s contributions to the United States\u2019 space program were recognized posthumously, and he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. He is remembered as a pioneering astronaut and a hero of the American space program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Edward White II (1930-1967) was an American astronaut and a member of the first astronaut class, known as the \u201cMercury Seven.\u201d White was one of the first Americans to fly in space, and he played a key role in the development of the United States\u2019 space program. White was born on November 14, 1930, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118,"parent":35,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-117","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions\/126"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apollospaceprogram.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}