SPACE.com -- Former Military Astronaut Among Hijack Victims

This IKONOS 2 spacecraft photo from September 12, 2001, shows the terrorist damage to New York from the September 11 attack.

The commercial IKONOS 2 satellite carries super-powerful camera system that snaps extremely close-up images of Earth, such as this image of lower Manhattan from June 30, 2000. The twin World Trade Center towers are visible on the left side of the image.

The aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon is clearly visible in this satellite image from the IKONOS spacecraft.

An image from Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite of the Pentagon before the September 11 attack.

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	Former Military Astronaut Among Hijack Victims By Robert Pearlman collectSPACE.com posted: 09:05 pm ET 16 September 2001

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Charles Edward "Chuck" Jones, a retired U.S. Air Force officer who was trained as an astronaut, was among the 92 victims of American Airlines Flight 11 when it was piloted by hijackers into the northern tower of the World Trade Center on Tuesday morning, September 11.

Jones, who was chosen in 1982 for Group 2 of the military's Manned Spaceflight Engineers (MSE) program, was assigned to fly STS-71L scheduled for August 1987 to assist the deployment of two Department of Defense payloads. His flight however, was cancelled after the Challenger accident in January 1986.

After leaving the MSE program in January 1987, Jones was stationed at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington D.C. and then as Systems Program Director for Intelligence and Information Systems, at Hanscom Air Force Base, in Bedford, Massachusetts.

According to the Boston Herald, Jones boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on "a routine business trip to Los Angeles on behalf of the Nashua, N.H.-based defense contractor BAE SYSTEMS."

Born on November 8, 1952, in Clinton, Indiana, he is survived by his wife Jeanette.

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