Walter Cunningham, a “true hero” and the last surviving Apollo mission astronaut, died Tuesday. He was 90.
Walter Cunningham, a retired astronaut who served as a pilot on the first successful crewed mission in NASA’s Apollo program, died in Houston on Tuesday, theA cause of death was not shared in NASA’s statement, but a family spokesperson told thethat Cunningham died “from complications of a fall, after a full and complete life.”
In low-Earth orbit over 11 days, he and his crew mates, Walter Schirra and Donn Eisele, also transmitted the first live television broadcast aboard a crewed U.S. spacecraft. After their first seven-minute broadcast, the trio “became well-known for their daily 10-minute television shows from orbit, during which they clowned around, held up humorous signs and generally educated television viewers back on earth about space flight,” according to astory from 1987.
The mission’s main objectives involved extensively testing the capabilities of the command and service modules. “We fixed a lot of things and were able to fly a much better spacecraft…” Cunningham told NASA in a 1999 interview for an oral history project. “The one that we flew was almost perfect! I mean, it was just—you couldn’t have asked for a better piece of hardware for the first time.”
But possibly because of the conflict, Cunningham was never sent back up again. “I was a bit disappointed,” he said, noting that he’d briefly been assigned to command another mission before its cancellation.
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