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Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly served as NASA's eighth Administrator from May 14, 1989 to March 31, 1992. Prior to becoming Administrator, Truly served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight. In this position, he led the painstaking rebuilding of the Space Shuttle program after the Challenger accident. Truly's career began in the Navy; in 1965, he became one of the first military astronauts selected to the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in Los Angeles, California. He transferred to NASA as an astronaut in August 1969 then served as capsule communicator for all three Skylab missions in 1973 as well as the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. He was pilot for the 747/Space Shuttle Enterprise approach and landing test flights during 1977, and his first space flight was November 12-14, 1981, as pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-2). After leaving NASA, Truly became Vice President and Director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta.