Astronaut from first successful Apollo mission dead at 90
Jack Birle
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The last surviving astronaut from the first successful Apollo mission, Apollo 7 in 1968, died Tuesday at the age of 90.
Walter Cunningham died in Houston, NASA said. The space agency’s administrator, Bill Nelson, called him an “explorer.”
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“Walt Cunningham was a fighter pilot, physicist and an entrepreneur — but, above all, he was an explorer. On Apollo 7, the first launch of a crewed Apollo mission, Walt and his crewmates made history, paving the way for the Artemis Generation we see today. NASA will always remember his contributions to our nation’s space program and sends our condolences to the Cunningham family,” Nelson said in a statement.
Cunningham was born in Creston, Iowa, in 1932 and joined the Navy in 1951 as a night fighter pilot in Korea. He was selected as an astronaut in 1963 and was originally slated to be part of the Apollo 2 crew before it was scrapped after the failure of Apollo 1.
He served as the lunar module pilot for the Apollo 7 mission, which served as the first human test of the Apollo spacecraft. The 11-day mission was a success and paved the way for the moon landing during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Cunningham would retire from NASA in 1971.
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“We would like to express our immense pride in the life that he lived, and our deep gratitude for the man that he was — a patriot, an explorer, pilot, astronaut, husband, brother, and father. The world has lost another true hero, and we will miss him dearly,” Cunningham’s family said in a statement.
Cunningham is survived by his wife and two children.