Captain Donald E. Williams (USN, Ret.) was a NASA astronaut and Navy officer, born on February 13, 1942, in Lafayette, Indiana, and passed away on February 23, 2016. He earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and later served in the U.S. Navy, flying over 6,000 hours with 745 carrier landings and completing 330 combat missions during his service in the Vietnam War. He was selected by NASA in 1978 and became an astronaut in 1979. Williams flew on two space missions: STS-51D in 1985, where he participated in the first unscheduled EVA to fix a satellite, and STS-34 in 1989, where he helped deploy the Galileo spacecraft for its journey to Jupiter. He logged a total of 287 hours in space. After retiring from both NASA and the Navy in 1990, Williams worked with Science Applications International Corporation. He was awarded numerous honors, including the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Courtesy of NASA,