Walter Cunningham, A Member Of NASA’s Human Spaceflight Program, Passes Away

Jan, 2023 - By WMR

As announced by NASA, a retired pilot and astronaut of the first manned Apollo mission (Apollo7), which completed163 orbits of the Earth, passed away at the age of 90.

Walter Cunningham was among the three members of the first manned Apollo mission in 1963. He was chosen as a pilot on the first ever crewed mission, Apollo 7 along with Capt. Walter M. Schirra r. of the Navy and Maj. Donn F. Eisele of the Air Force. The three of them completed 163 Earth orbits which is equal to four and a half million miles in a remodeled space capsule taking into many safety considerations and modifications. The Apollo mission continued for about 11 days.

The Apollo 7 mission of 168 sent crew members into the journey of the orbit that was in respect of a test flight to prove the fact that Apollo capsule is capable to meet other spacecraft secretly in the orbit and lead way for further future explorations into space. This was notable from the aspect that it was, for the first time broadcasted live on TV from space as confirmed by NASA.

Walter Cunningham was born in Creston, Iowa. Cunningham had received an honors bachelor degree in physics and had done masters with distinction in physics from University of California, Los Angeles. At the time of launch of Apollo 7, Cunningham was 36. He had immense interest in space and so he became the leader of NASA’s Skylab program, which is known to be the United States’ first space station that circumnavigated the Earth from 1973 to 1979.

In 1952, Cunningham became enlisted as a pilot at the US Navy and started his training before joining NASA. In his official biography, he worked as a fighter pilot with USMarine Corps on 54 missions in Kerala.