NASA Mission Director Chet Lee Dies


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	NASA Mission Director Chet Lee Dies posted: 10:09 am ET 08 March 2000

Former NASA Worker, Chet Lee, Dies

WASHINGTON (AP) - Retired Navy Capt. Chester Lee, who was mission director on the NASA teams that launched six Apollo moon missions including Apollo 13, has died at Washington hospital from complications following open heart surgery. He was 80.

Lee died February 23 at the Washington Hospital Center.

At his death, Lee was a special adviser to Spacehab, a Washington-based company that provides services to NASA. He also helped develop the pressurized modules used by astronauts to conduct experiments in space.

Images

Artist Robert McCall's depiction of the Apollo-Soyuz docking in 1975.

Apollo 13's damaged service module, seen shortly before reentry.

Apollo 15's Jim Irwin is flanked by the lunar module Falcon and the Lunar Rover (right). The peak in the background is Hadley Delta.

One of the two lightning bolts that struck Apollo 12 beginning 36 seconds after launch, captured by a NASA movie camera. (NASA photo). Click to enlarge.

In 1965, after retiring from the Navy, Lee began a 23-year NASA career, largely with the Apollo program but also as program director of the first joint space venture between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the 1973-75 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

He was mission director for the last six Apollo launchings, including the tense Apollo 13 mission, which returned to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded in mid-flight.

Lee, the son of Italian immigrants, was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1942.

After radar training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he entered the World War 2 fleet as gunnery officer on the destroyer USS Drexler. Japanese kamikaze pilots attacked and sank the Drexler with a loss of 158 officers and men. Lee was among 52 survivors.

After the war Lee trained in missile systems and participated in the Navy's development of the Polaris missile. He was also the commander of the destroyer Gyatt.

Lee oversaw the Apollo-Soyuz mission, in which Soviet and American astronauts docked in space in 1975. Soon after, he began working in NASA's shuttle operations when they were expanded to include foreign governments and corporations and finally left the space agency in 1987.

Lee is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.