Chris Kraft obituary

Nasa’s first flight director who controlled the Apollo moon landings

The engineer Chris Kraft, who has died aged 95, was Nasa’s first flight director, the man who shaped the team – and the control centre – at Cape Canaveral in Florida and, from 1963, in Houston, Texas. Kraft’s work spanned the era from Nasa’s first faltering manned missions during the space race of the 1960s to the space shuttle in the 80s.

He was director of flight operations at Nasa when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their moon landing in Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969, and signed off with the Apollo 12 mission that November. He returned in 1970 to chair the crisis meeting as the crippled Apollo 13 limped back to Earth.

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