A cat walks past a Soyuz space ship installed at a museum, at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Tuesday, November 15, 2016. The start of the new Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled on early Friday, Nov. 18 local time. The Russian rocket will carry French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and U.S. astronaut Peggy Annette Whitson. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

NASA space shuttle Atlantis in Earth orbit is seen during a Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or back flip to enable space station crew members to take high resolution digital pictures of the shuttle's heat shield before docking for the last time with the International Space Station July 10, 2011 in space. Atlantis has embarked on a 12-day mission to the International Space Station where it will deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with supplies and spare parts. This will be the final launch of the space shuttle program, which began on April 12, 1981 with the launch of Colombia. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

In this photo provided by NASA, the sample return capsule from NASA's Osiris-Rex mission lies on the ground shortly after touching down in the desert, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range on Sunday, September 24, 2023. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. (Photo by Keegan Barber/NASA via AP Photo)

Astronauts Harrison Schmitt (left) and Eugene Andrew Cernan practice taking geological samples at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in preparation for NASA's scheduled Apollo 17 lunar landing mission, on August 28, 1972. Schmitt is the Lunar Module Pilot and Cernan is the mission's Commander. They are training for their period of EVA (extravehicular activity) on the Moon. (Photo by Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

A craftsman makes imitation bread samples at The Sample Factory on February 25, 2008 in Gujo, Gifu, Japan. Gujo City has more than a 50 percent share of the imitation vinyl chloride samples industry. Replica foods are used in most restaurant window displays in Japan, and are popular as souvenirs for tourists. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

A resident reacts as a health worker collects a swab sample to test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Colombo on July 27, 2021. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

A girl reacts while getting a nasal swab sample at a testing and screening facility for the new coronavirus in a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, July 17, 2020. (Photo by Fareed Khan/AP Photo)