Spa300 Bill Dana signed 10 x 8 colour photo. From 1960 through 1962 he was a pilot astronaut in the U.S. Air Force X-20 Dyna-Soar program.Dana was a project pilot on the hypersonic X-15 research aircraft and flew the rocket-powered vehicle 16 times, reaching a top speed of 3,897 mph. His peak altitude of 307,000 feet (nearly 59 miles high) qualified him for astronaut wings. He was the pilot on the final (199th) flight of the 10-year program. In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, Dana was a project pilot on the manned lifting body program, which flew several versions of the wingless vehicles and produced data that helped in development of the Space Shuttle. He completed one NASA M2-F1, nine Northrop HL-10, nineteen Northrop M2-F3 and two Martin-Marietta X-24B flights, for a total of 31 lifting body missions.