Thomas P. Stafford(1930-2024)

One of the most experienced of the Apollo era astronauts, he flew two Gemini and two Apollo missions. On Gemini 6 he flew with Wally Schirra conducting the first rendezvous of two separate spacecrafts and on Gemini 9 he was the commander with Eugene Cernan rendezvousing with an Agena target vehicle. On Apollo 10 he went to the moon with John Young and Eugene Cernan without landing and flew the Apollo Soyuz Test Project as the commander with Vance Brand and Deke Slayton in 1975 on the last Apollo mission. The lunar module on the Apollo 10 mission was called Snoopy while the command module was called Charlie Brown.

Houston, this is Apollo 10. You can tell the world we have arrived. [on reaching a lunar orbit that brought the spacecraft within nine miles of the Moon's surface, quoted in the New York Times, 22 May 1969]