Dwell
Walter Cunningham, the final surviving astronaut from the primary profitable crewed house mission in NASA’s Apollo program, has died aged 90.
NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs confirmed Cunningham’s demise however didn’t instantly present additional particulars.
Cunningham’s spouse, Dot Cunningham, mentioned in an announcement he died on Tuesday however didn’t say the place or present a explanation for demise.
Cunningham was considered one of three astronauts aboard the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, an 11-day spaceflight that beamed reside tv broadcasts as they orbited the earth, paving the way in which for the moon touchdown lower than a yr later.
Cunningham, then a civilian, crewed the mission with Navy Captain Walter M. Schirra and Donn F. Eisele, an Air Pressure main.
Cunningham was the lunar module pilot on the house flight, which launched from Cape Kennedy Air Pressure Station, Florida, on October 11 and splashed down within the Atlantic Ocean south of Bermuda.
NASA mentioned Cunningham, Eisele and Schirra flew a near-perfect mission.
Their spacecraft carried out so nicely the company despatched the following crew, Apollo 8, to orbit the moon as a prelude to the Apollo 11 moon touchdown in July 1969.
The Apollo 7 astronauts additionally received a particular Emmy award for his or her day by day tv experiences from orbit, throughout which they clowned round, held up humorous indicators and educated earthlings about house flight.
It was NASA’s first crewed house mission for the reason that deaths of the three Apollo 1 astronauts in a launch pad hearth on January 27, 1967.
Cunningham recalled Apollo 7 throughout a 2017 occasion on the Kennedy Area Heart, saying it “enabled us to beat all of the obstacles we had after the Apollo 1 hearth and it grew to become the longest, most profitable take a look at flight of any flying machine ever”.
Cunningham was born in Creston, Iowa, and attended highschool in California earlier than enlisting with the Navy in 1951 and serving as a Marine Corps pilot in Korea, in response to NASA.
He later obtained bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in physics from the College of California at Los Angeles, the place he additionally did doctoral research, and labored as a scientist for the Rand Company earlier than becoming a member of NASA.
In an interview the yr earlier than his demise, Cunningham recalled rising up poor and dreaming of flying airplanes, not spacecraft.
“We by no means even knew that there have been astronauts after I was rising up,” Cunningham informed The Spokesman-Overview.
After NASA, Cunningham labored in engineering, enterprise and investing, and have become a public speaker and radio host.
He wrote a memoir about his profession and time as an astronaut, The All-American Boys.
Though Cunningham by no means crewed one other house mission after Apollo 7, he remained a proponent of house exploration.
He informed the Spokane, Washington, paper final yr: “I feel that people must proceed increasing and pushing out the degrees at which they’re surviving in house.”
Cunningham is survived by his spouse, his sister Cathy Cunningham, and his youngsters Brian and Kimberly.
