Space Shuttle Atlantis lands at the Kennedy Space Center July 21, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The landing brings to a close the 30-year era of the space shuttle program that began in 1981, and has included 135 missions. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

Women walk next to soldiers in Surcubamba, Peru, Thursday, May 21, 2015. The Joint Command of the Peruvian Armed Forces organized a humanitarian mission to Surcubamba, where health care was provided to families from nearby villages in this region called VRAEM, the acronym for Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, where sixty percent of Peru's cocaine originates. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

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)

European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake will return home after a six-month long mission on the International Space Station,on June 18, 2016. Peake was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the ISS and captured hundreds of photographs of the Earth during his mission. Here: “Lots of sun-glint right now during our whole orbit – we haven't seen a sunset for over 3 days”, he wrote. (Photo by Tim Peake/ESA/NASA)

ESA astronaut Tim Peake posted this stunning image on his social media channels, commenting: “Station passed through magnificent aurora Australis last night”. Tim is set to return to Earth on 18 June 2016, bringing his six-month Principia mission to the ISS to an end. During his stay he performed more than 30 scientific experiments for ESA and taking part in numerous others from ESA's international partners. ESA and the UK Space Agency have partnered to develop many exciting educational activities around the Principia mission, aimed at sparking the interest of young children in science and space. (Photo by Tim Peake/ESA/NASA)

Apollo 9 Command/Service Modules (CSM) nicknamed “Gumdrop” and Lunar Module (LM), nicknamed “Spider” are shown docked together as Command Module pilot David R. Scott stands in the open hatch. Astronaut Russell L. Schweickart, Lunar Module pilot, took this photograph of Scott during his EVA as he stood on the porch outside the Lunar Module. Apollo 9 was an Earth orbital mission designed to test docking procedures between the CSM and LM as well as test fly the Lunar Module in the relative safe confines of Earth orbit. (Photo by NASA)