Pilot of The First Moon Landing, Michael Collins, Has Passed Away Age 90 ISSAM AHMED, AFP 28 APRIL 2021 American astronaut Michael Collins, who piloted the Apollo 11 command module while his crewmates became the first people to walk on the Moon, died on Wednesday of cancer, his family said.
Sometimes called "the loneliest man in history" because of his long solo flight while his colleagues loped across the lunar surface, Collins never earned the same global name recognition as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. But he was hailed as a lifelong advocate of space exploration: erudite and witty yet also self-effacing, maintaining in a 2009 interview with NASA that his historic accomplishments were "90 percent blind luck" and that astronauts should not be celebrated as heroes.