Home
News
Spaceflight
On May 10, 1967, a NASA research aircraft known as the wingless M2-F2 lifting body crashed on Rogers Dry Lakebed at the Dryden Flight Research Center in California. (It’s now called the Armstrong Flight Research Center.)
The test pilot, Bruce Peterson, was severely injured, but he survived, although he did lose his vision in his right eye. Peterson was coming in for a landing during a glide test flight when the plane starting doing something called a “Dutch roll” oscillation. He regained control, but then he got distracted when he thought he was about to hit a recovery helicopter.
A crash landing by the M2-F2 on the Rogers dry lakebed. (Image credit: NASA)The M2-F2 didn’t hit the helicopter, but it did drift away from the runway. Without the markers, it was difficult for the pilot to judge how high he was flying. Peterson didn’t deploy the landing gear in time, and the M2-F2 smacked into the ground, rolled over six times, and came to rest upside-down.
Footage from the crash later became famous when it was featured in the TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man” in the 1970s.
Catch up on our entire “On This Day In Space” series on YouTube with this playlist.
On This Day in Space Archive! Still not enough space? Don’t forget to check out our Space Image of the Day, and on the weekends our Best Space Photos and Top Space News Stories of the week.
Follow us @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
