NASA Astronaut Group 7

Group 7
Group 7 astronauts. Left to right: Bobko, Fullerton, Hartsfield, Crippen, Peterson, Truly and Overmyer.
Year selected	1969
Number selected	7
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NASA Astronaut Group 7 was a group of seven astronauts accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on August 14, 1969. It was the last group to be selected during the Project Apollo era, and the first since the Mercury Seven in which all members were active-duty military personnel, and all made flights into space.

The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a semi-secret United States Air Force (USAF) space project, with a public face but a covert reconnaissance mission. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program in three intakes in 1965, 1966 and 1967. They were drawn from the USAF, US Navy and US Marine Corps, but all were graduates of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School. The MOL program intended to use a modified NASA Project Gemini spacecraft known as Gemini B.

When the MOL program was canceled in June 1969, fourteen astronauts remained in the program. NASA accepted the seven youngest as NASA astronauts. By the time they joined NASA, all Apollo flight assignments had been lined up, but they were given non-flying support assignments for Apollo, Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The former MOL astronauts went on to form the core of early Space Shuttle pilots, upgrading to commander after their first flight, and flying 17 missions between them.