Group 4 (1965 Scientists)
Joe Kerwin
First physician in space; helped save Skylab on its first crewed mission.
Joe Kerwin, a Navy flight surgeon and aviator, became the first physician to fly in space as science pilot of Skylab 2. With Pete Conrad he performed the hazardous spacewalk that freed the station’s jammed solar array, restoring the power that saved the program.
His 28 days of medical experiments produced the first systematic data on how the human body adapts to prolonged weightlessness, foundational to every long-duration mission since.