Joseph Peter Kerwin (born February 19, 1932) is an American physician and former NASA astronaut. He served as the science pilot for the Skylab 2 mission from May 25, 1973, to June 22, 1973. He was the first physician to be selected for astronaut training and the first doctor from the United States to enter space.
Kerwin was the one who uttered the words during Apollo 13: "Farewell, Aquarius, and we thank you." He was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.
Skylab 2 (also SL-2 and SLM-1) was the first crewed mission to Skylab, the first American orbital space station. The mission was launched on an Apollo command and service module by a Saturn IB rocket on May 25, 1973, and carried NASA astronauts Pete Conrad, Joseph P. Kerwin, Paul J. Weitz to the station. The name Skylab 2 also refers to the vehicle used for that mission. The Skylab 2 mission established a twenty-eight-day record for human spaceflight duration. Its crew was the first space station occupants ever to return safely to Earth – the only previous space station occupants, the crew of the 1971 Soyuz 11 mission that had crewed the Salyut 1 station for twenty-four days, died upon reentry due to unexpected cabin depressurization.
The crewed Skylab missions were officially designated Skylab 2, 3, and 4. Miscommunication about the numbering resulted in the mission emblems reading "Skylab I", "Skylab II", and "Skylab 3" respectively.
Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft. In the absence of a breathable Earthlike atmosphere, the astronaut is completely reliant on a space suit for environmental support. EVA includes spacewalks and lunar or planetary surface exploration (commonly known from 1969 to 1972 as moonwalks). In a stand-up EVA (SEVA), an astronaut stands through an open hatch but does not fully leave the spacecraft. EVAs have been conducted by the Soviet Union/Russia, the United States, and China; astronauts from Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the European Space Agency have also participated in EVAs conducted by those nations.
On March 18, 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to perform a spacewalk, exiting the Voskhod 2 capsule for 12 minutes and 9 seconds. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to perform a moonwalk, outside his lunar lander on Apollo 11 for 2 hours and 31 minutes. In 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to perform a spacewalk, conducting EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours and 35 minutes. On the last three Moon missions, astronauts also performed deep-space EVAs on the return to Earth, to retrieve film canisters from the outside of the spacecraft. American Astronauts Pete Conrad, Joseph Kerwin, and Paul Weitz also used EVA in 1973 to repair launch damage to Skylab, the United States' first space station.