Edward Higgins White, II (Lt.Col , USAF) (November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967) was an engineer, United States Air Force officer and a NASA astronaut. On June 3, 1965, he became the first American to conduct a spacewalk. White was killed along with fellow astronauts Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee during a training exercise and pre-launch test for the first Apollo mission at the Kennedy Space Center. White was posthumously awarded the Congressional...
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Edward Higgins White, II (Lt.Col , USAF) (November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967) was an engineer, United States Air Force officer and a NASA astronaut. On June 3, 1965, he became the first American to conduct a spacewalk. White was killed along with fellow astronauts Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee during a training exercise and pre-launch test for the first Apollo mission at the Kennedy Space Center. White was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and had previously been awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal for his Gemini 4 spaceflight.
He was born in San Antonio, Texas where he was a Second Class Scout in the Boy Scouts of America and earned a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy in 1952, and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1959. He attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force and was a pilot of F-86 and F-100 fighter jets. White was an experimental test pilot for the Aeronautical Systems Division and...
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