Milt Windler, One of Four Mission Control Leaders on Apollo 13, Dies at 94

Milt Windler, one of the four leaders of Mission Control who in 1970 directed the round-the-clock effort to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely, has died at the age of 94. He went on to serve as a flight director for all three crewed missions to Skylab, the United States’ first space station. Four leaders, round-the-clock: that arithmetic is the story. A crisis that unfolds over days isn’t run by one person refusing to sleep; it’s run in shifts, with a flight director holding the room for each one. Windler was one of the four NASA trusted with a leg of it. His later assignment reaches from the most famous rescue in the program to its first space station, a reminder that the work of running a mission outlives the missions everyone remembers.