NEWS NASA announced that the astronaut who smuggled a sandwich into space died

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John Young

He was one of the great astronauts in the history of NASA. It was the ninth in walking on the lunar surface, and in its 42 years of trajectory in the space agency it arrived twice at the earth's satellite. In total he made six adventures to space and even had the luxury of committing a mischief: he brought a contraband sandwich.

He died on January 5, aged 87, because of a complication in his pneumonia. "We are sad about the loss of astronaut John Young," they said from NASA in the statement announcing his death.

Scott Kelly, another astronaut defined him as "a true legend", and Terry Virts, another of his colleagues dismissed him saying: "You were one of my heroes as an astronaut and explorer, we will miss your passion for space". The interim director of NASA, Robert Lightfoot, defined him as "a pioneer"

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Throughout his long career he obtained more than 80 awards, prizes and distinctions. He was also included in the Hall of Fame of American aviation in 1988. He started his space path in 1962 and traveled for the first time in space in 1965, with the mission Gemini 3. There, while orbiting the Moon, surprised everyone by giving him a sandwich of contraband to his companion Gus Grissom, what he was worth the challenge of his superiors.

He finally had the luxury of touching the Moon on the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. Nine years later, Young commanded the inaugural flight of NASA's first space shuttle, Columbia and in 1983 he retired from space with his sixth voyage.

Since then, he dedicated himself to selecting astronauts for future missions and, after his retirement from the agency in 2004, admitted in his autobiography that he felt guilty for the shuttle accidents Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003).