Frank Borman

Frank Frederick Borman II (March 14, 1928 – November 7, 2023) was an American United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 28 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Four days before he graduated with the West Point Class of 1950, in which he was ranked eighth out of 670, Borman was commissioned in the USAF. He qualified as a fighter pilot and served in the Philippines. He earned a Master of Science degree at Caltech in 1957, and then became an assistant professor of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics at West Point. In 1960, he was selected for Class 60-C at the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and qualified as a test pilot. On graduation, he was accepted as one of five students in the first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. Borman was selected as a NASA astronaut with the second group, known as the Next Nine, in 1962. In 1966, he set a fourteen-day spaceflight endurance record as commander of Gemini 7. He served on the NASA review board which investigated the Apollo 1 fire, and then flew to the Moon with Apollo 8 in December 1968. The mission is known for the Earthrise photograph taken by Anders of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon as the Command/Service Module orbited the Moon, and for the reading from Genesis, which was televised to Earth from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve. During the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission, he was the NASA liaison at the White House,...