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Michael Collins, the command pilot of the first crewed mission to the moon, has died aged 90 following a “valiant battle” with cancer.
Collins was the command pilot of Apollo 11 in the first crewed mission to the moon with Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin.
His family said in a statement: “We will miss him terribly. Yet we also know how lucky Mike felt to have lived the life he did.
“Please join us fondly in remembering his sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose, and his wise perspective, gained both from looking back from Earth from the vantage of space.”
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Michael Collins, command module pilot on Apollo 11, dies at 90
Michael Collins stands in front the steel skeleton of the new National Air and Space Museum in Washington in July 1974. Collins was director from 1971 to 1978. (Doug Chevalier/Washington Post)
Published April 28. 2021 5:02PM
Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post
Sarah Kaplan08:17, Apr 29 2021
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Astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while Neil Armstrong and Edwin Buzz Aldrin took giant leaps for mankind on its surface, has died at the age of 90.
On July 20, 1969, eight years after President John F Kennedy pledged to land a man on the lunar surface and return him safely to Earth, astronaut Michael Collins sat alone in the command module Columbia. He was floating 60 miles (96.5km) above what he later called the withered, sun-seared peach pit of the moon. A lander carrying his fellow Apollo 11 crewmen, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Buzz Aldrin, sped away from the main craft, en route to fulfilling Kennedy s goal.
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins during 1969 visit: I feel like I belong in New Orleans
The NASA astronaut who died Wednesday considered New Orleans his adopted home. His father & grandfather were born here. He visited in 1969 after the moon landing.
Credit: AP Author: Dominic Massa / WWL-TV Updated: 3:26 PM CDT April 28, 2021
NEW ORLEANS Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who died Wednesday at 90, called New Orleans his adopted hometown. His father and grandfather were both born here and another relative was a former mayor.
“I don’t feel like I’m really adopted. I feel like I belong in New Orleans,” Collins said in a Sept. 6, 1969 article in The States-Item newspaper, chronicling a visit to the city by the astronaut just a few months after the historic Apollo 11 moon landing.