Ed Fendell
Birthday: 1932 Mission Control Position: INCO
At the beginning of his career, Ed Fendell was going nowhere fast.
With just a two-year associate?s degree in merchandising, Fendell?s prospects weren?t exactly inspiring. Still, he scored off the charts on an aptitude test while serving in the United States Air Force. Fendell never looked back, and eventually joined NASA in 1964.
He first served as a remote-site Capsule Communicator, a job that took him to tracking stations around the world during the Gemini program. In that position, it was his job to exchange messages with orbiting spacecraft.
Fendell moved to Houston after Gemini, and wound up as an Assistant Flight Director. It was a job he loathed, and he was eventually made head of the Communications section after problems talking back and forth between spacecraft and Earth plagued the flights of Apollo 9 and 10. Later, Fendell would use a camera mounted on the Lunar Rover perfectly capture the lunar liftoff of the Apollo 17 Lunar Module Challenger.
Following his 1984 retirement from NASA, Fendell remained active while helping build houses for Habitats for Humanity.
