In 1983, he commanded a Challenger shuttle flight. After the 1986 disaster, he was charged with leading NASA’s return to space.
Richard Truly, a naval aviator and astronaut who flew aboard two early space shuttle missions and, as NASA’s associate administrator, guided the agency’s return to space after the Challenger disaster, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Genesee, Colo. He was 86.
The cause was atypical Parkinson’s disease, according to his wife, Colleen (Hanner) Truly.
Mr. Truly joined NASA in 1969, but he didn’t venture into space for 12 years, when he was the pilot of the shuttle program’s second orbital flight. The success of that flight proved that NASA could safely relaunch the Columbia shuttle, seven months after its maiden flight, and safely return it to earth.
The mission was supposed to last five days, but it was slashed to two after one of the Columbia’s fuel cells failed. (The Columbia disaster that killed a seven-person crew in 2003 occurred well after Mr. Truly had left NASA.)
In 1983, Mr. Truly, who was a captain at the time, commanded the Challenger during its third flight, the eighth overall in the shuttle program. It took off at night and landed in darkness — a first for the program. The flight also marked a personal distinction: Captain Truly was the first American grandfather in space.
Soon after, he retired from NASA to become the first commander of the Naval Space Command, which consolidated the Navy’s operations in space communications, navigation and surveillance.