The last member of the Apollo 7 mission has died

At the age of 90

Walter Cunningham was the last living astronaut who participated in the 1968 Apollo 7 mission. He died on Tuesday at the age of 90. NASA confirmed his death, stressing that he played a key role in the success of the program that led to astronauts landing on the moon. Cunningham passed away at a local Houston hospital after complications from a fall.

The Apollo 7 mission was the first space flight since the Apollo 1 tragedy in 1967, in which three astronauts burned alive during a launch rehearsal. So NASA banned manned flights for 21 months and increased the duration of astronaut training.

On October 22, 1968, the Apollo 7 crew disembarked after 11 days in space, during which they tested NASA equipment that would lead to Apollo 11’s landing on the moon and the first humans to set foot on the surface of the Moon.

Cunningham retired from NASA in 1971 and tried his luck in the private sector. He later became a public climate change denier, accusing NASA of being a media-controlled agency, while claiming that the science of climate change was simply demagoguery, not science.