Walter Cunningham on a mission aboard the Apollo 7 in 1968. Courtesy of NASA
Walter Cunningham, astronaut of Apollo 7, who performed NASA’s first manned lunar mission in 1968, died on the 3rd (local time) at the age of 90. After Don Eisel in 1987 and Walter Schirra in 2007, the last astronauts aboard Apollo 7 passed away.
“Walter Cunningham was a fighter pilot, physicist and entrepreneur, but before he was an explorer,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement on the 4th (local time). “On Apollo 7, Walt and his colleagues paved the way for the Artemis program.” said. The Artemis program is a manned lunar exploration mission that NASA started 50 years following the Apollo project. Last month, the Orion spacecraft of Artemis 1 safely returned to Earth and successfully took its first step.
Born in 1932 in Iowa, USA, Cunningham joined the Navy in 1951. He also flew 54 missions as a pilot during the Korean War. After being discharged from the military, he received master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Harvard University. Since 1963, he has been selected as a NASA astronaut and has been active.
He boarded Apollo 7, which was launched in October 1968, and returned to Earth following orbiting the Earth 163 times for 11 days. It was a mission to test the flight capabilities of the spacecraft prior to full-scale lunar exploration. At the time, the process of Cunningham carrying out the mission with US Navy Captain Walter Schirra and US Air Force Major Don Achill was broadcast on TV. Their achievements are evaluated as having laid the foundation for future manned lunar exploration.
After 1971, Cunningham turned into a venture capitalist and investor. He continued his external activities, such as hosting a radio talk show. He even published his memoir, The All American Voice, in 2010 looking back on his days as an astronaut.