Spaceflight Insider
Theresa Cross
May 6th, 2021
An illustration of a Dragon XL spacecraft approaching an evolved Lunar Gateway outpost around the Moon. Credit: NASA
There is a Change.org petition to rename NASA’s Lunar Gateway after former Apollo astronaut Michael Collins, who died April 28, 2021, at age 90.
Collins was one of three astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, the first to land humans on the Moon. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface in the Lunar Module, Collins remained aboard the Command Module, orbiting some 65 miles (105 kilometers) above the Moon for more than 21 hours as the world turned its attention to the landing. This led some to call him “the loneliest man in history.”