This flight, the first of a reused spacecraft made the pilot of the mission qualified under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale a what?
Joseph A. Walker Joseph Albert "Joe" Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) flew the world's first two spaceplane flights in 1963, thereby becoming the United States' seventh man in space. Walker was a Captain in the United States Air Force, an American World War II pilot, an experimental physicist, a NASA test pilot, and a member of the U.S. Air Force Man In Space Soonest spaceflight program. His two X-15 experimental rocket aircraft flights in 1963 that exceeded the Kármán line – the altitude of 100 km , generally considered to mark the threshold of outer space – qualified him as an astronaut under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
STS-36 STS-36 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, during which Space Shuttle "Atlantis" carried a classified payload for the U.S. Department of Defense (believed to have been a Misty reconnaissance satellite) into orbit. STS-36 was the 34th shuttle mission overall, the sixth flight for "Atlantis", and the fourth night launch of the shuttle program. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 28 February 1990, and landed on 4 March.