“People and Space”. Winner: Wanderer in Patagonia by Yuri Zvezdny (Russia) A lone stargazer stares up at the stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way, as they stretch across the night sky over the glacier “White Stones” (Piedras Blancas) in the Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina. El Chaltén, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, 27 September 2016 iOptron Sky-Tracker mount, Sony A7S camera, 18 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 5000, 30-second exposure Wanderer in Patagonia. (Photo by Yuri Zvezdny/Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017)

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)

Cheering The News of Germany's Surrender New Yorkers Gather around a youth wearing a mask of Adolf Hitler to cheer the news of the Surrender of Germany on May 7. The Crowd is gathered in times Square, New York. May 08, 1945. (Photo by New York Post/Photo Archives, LLC 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)

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Police Officer Keith Flood trains with his K-9 partner Doc, a German Shepherd, inside the “warehouse room” at the new MTA Police Department Canine Training Center in Stormville, New York, U.S., June 6, 2016. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

Principle Ballet Dancer, Ekaterina Bulgutova, of the Russian State Ballet, with the Nutcracker part of Christmas Ballet Season in Cardiff which starts at St Davids Hall on December 20, 2016 in Cardiff, England. (Photo by Kiran Ridley/Barcroft Images)

Athlets run during the women's 3000 meter steeplechase at the International Athletics Meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, 14 June 2016. (Photo by Alexandra Wey/EPA)

The Berenson robot strolls among visitors during the exhibition “Persona : Oddly Human” at the Quai Branly museum in Paris, France, February 23, 2016. The Berenson robot, developed in France in 2011, is the brainchild of anthropologist Denis Vidal and robotics engineer Philippe Gaussier. Its programming allows it to record reactions of museum visitors to certain pieces of art and then use the data to develop its own unique taste, which allows “Berenson” to judge whether or not it likes a certain work of art within an exhibition. (Photo by Philippe Wojazer/Reuters)