Photo of the crash of a North American X-15 rocket plane: Th - Lot 414

Photo of the crash of a North American X-15 rocket plane: This American experimental hypersonic suborbital aircraft conducted 200 test flights for NASA and the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.The X-15 helped explore the flight envelope of future spacecraft up to Mach 8. On November 15, 1967, pilot Michael J. Adams lost his life aboard his X-15 No. 3, which had become uncontrollable and was subjected to excessive g-forces. The aircraft disintegrated near Johannesburg, California. It is worth noting that astronaut Neil Armstrong completed seven flights aboard the X-15 between 1960 and 1962. He left the X-15 program upon his selection for NASA’s second group of astronauts in September 1962. Original black-and-white NASA photo, 20 x 25 cm, captioned on the back and numbered 67-H-1568. Aeronautics -