The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a joint project of the US Air Force (USAF) and the National Reconnaissance Office to obtain high-resolution photographic imagery of America’s Cold War adversaries. Authorized in August 1965, the MOL Program envisioned a series of mini-space stations in low polar Earth orbit, occupied by 2-man crews for 30 days at a time, launching and returning to Earth aboard modified Gemini capsules.
The USAF selected Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., on June 30, 1967, as a member of the third group of aerospace research pilots for the MOL Program. Lawrence thus became the first African-American to be selected as an astronaut by any national space program.
Born in Chicago on October 2, 1935, Lawrence graduated from high school at 16, earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bradley University at age 20 and became an Air Force officer and pilot. Lawrence was a highly accomplished pilot with 2,500 flying hours, 2,000 in jets, and earned a PhD in physical chemistry from The Ohio State University in 1965, the only selected MOL astronaut with a doctorate. He completed US Air Force Test Pilot School in June 1967 and was immediately assigned to the MOL Program. While serving as an instructor for another pilot practicing landing techniques later used in the Space Shuttle program, Lawrence perished in a crash of an F-104 Starfighter supersonic jet on December 8, 1967, at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. Although both men ejected from the crash Lawrence did not survive, the promising career of the pilot-scientist suddenly extinguished. He was survived by his wife Barbara and eight-year-old son Tracey. Fellow MOL classmate and later NASA astronaut Don Peterson recalled in an oral history, “Bob was a super guy. His death was a terrible tragedy.”