Edward Galen Givens Jr. was a United States Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. Selected by NASA in 1966 as a member of the fifth astronaut group, he died in an automobile accident before being assigned to a prime or backup spaceflight crew.
Edward Givens
ARPS Class III graduates Front row: Givens, Tommie Benefield, Charlie Bassett, Greg Neubeck and Mike Collins. Back row: Al Atwell, Neil Garland, Jim Roman, Al Uhalt and Joe Engle.
Givens (sitting row, 1st from left), with fellow Original 19 astronauts
NASA Astronaut Group 5 was a group of nineteen astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. Of the six Lunar Module Pilots that walked on the Moon, three came from Group 5. The group as a whole is roughly split between the half who flew to the Moon, and the half who flew Skylab and Space Shuttle, providing the core of Shuttle commanders early in that program. This group is also distinctive in being the only time when NASA hired a person into the astronaut corps who had already earned astronaut wings, X-15 pilot Joe Engle. John Young labeled the group the Original Nineteen in parody of the original Mercury Seven astronauts.
Group 5 astronauts. Back row, left to right: Swigert, Pogue, Evans, Weitz, Irwin, Carr, Roosa, Worden, Mattingly, Lousma. Front row, from left to right: Givens, Mitchell, Duke, Lind, Haise, Engle, Brand, Bull, McCandless
Image: Vance D Brand
Image: John S. Bull
Image: Gerald P. Carr 2