Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins Dies At 90

American astronaut Michael Collins, who flew the Apollo 11 command module as his crewmates became the first people to land on the Moon on July 20, 1969, died Wednesday after battling cancer, his family.

“Mike always faced the challenges of life with grace and humility, and he faced this, his final challenge, in the same way,” the Collins family posted on their official Twitter account.

“Please join us in fondly and joyfully remembering your keen wit, quiet sense of purpose, and wise perspective gained both by looking back at Earth from the perspective of space and gazing out at the calm waters from the deck. of his fishing boat. ”

Details about the service will be released, they added.

Collins was born in Rome in 1930 and was the son of a US Army officer who was serving as a military attaché there. He then became an air force fighter pilot and retired with the rank of major general.

He is best known for being a member of the Apollo 11 mission when his fellow crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the Moon.

Collins would go on to say that the experience forever changed his perspective, impressed by the fragility of our home planet.

“When we went out and looked at (the Moon), oh, it was an amazing sphere,” he said at a 2019 event at George Washington University to mark the 50th anniversary.

But “as magnificent as it was, as impressive, and as much as I remember it, that was nothing, nothing compared to this other window,” he continued.

“There was a little pea the size of your fingernail with outstretched arm: blue, white, very bright, you get the blue of the oceans, the white of the clouds, streaks of rust that we call continents, such a beautiful and beautiful thing, nestled in this black velvet from the rest of the universe. ”

Collins never returned to space, but became a diplomat and served as undersecretary of state for public affairs at the height of the Vietnam War.

He later became the first director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

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