A decorated Army veteran, experimental test pilot, and NASA payload specialist who supported 14 Space Shuttle and International Space Station construction missions was killed along with his entire family when their single-engine plane crashed in South Carolina last week.

The tragedy is now drawing fresh scrutiny amid an ongoing congressional investigation into the deaths and disappearances of at least 11 other top U.S. scientists tied to nuclear, aerospace, and advanced propulsion programs.

James “Tony” Moffatt, 60, his wife Leasa, 61, and their sons Andrew, 30, and William, 28, all perished when the Mooney M20 aircraft went down in a wooded area near Union County Airport around 6:30 p.m. on April 17.

The family from Huntsville, Alabama, had been flying from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, back home and stopped to refuel. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating, but no cause has been released.

Moffatt’s background reads like a who’s who of America’s most sensitive defense and space programs. A 21-year military veteran who earned a master’s in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech and trained as an experimental test pilot at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, he later served as a payload and flight crew support specialist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

UNDER SCRUTINY: NASA test pilot and family of 4 die in South Carolina crash as Congress investigates pattern of 11 scientist deaths since 2022. Trump says: 'I hope it's random.' NTSB and FAA are investigating.https://t.co/ep501m00N9

After retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2008, he founded Moffatt Systems Inc. and worked as a principal research engineer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributing to programs like the Army’s Degraded Visual Environment Mitigation effort and next-generation unmanned aircraft systems.

His son Andrew was also a research engineer and scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Research and Engineering Support Center.

Military veteran with NASA ties, along with his family, killed in plane crash, adding to mysteryhttps://t.co/8pGwu7LvZO

This latest loss comes as House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Congress intensify their probe into a disturbing pattern of deaths and vanishings among experts in nuclear technology, fusion physics, exotic propulsion, and space surveillance.

Source: modernity