Michael Collins

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Michael Collins born October 31 1930 in Rome Italy was a former American astronaut and test pilot Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963 he flew in space twice His first spaceflight was Gemini 10 in which he and command pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and Collins undertook two EVAs His second spaceflight was as the command module pilot for Apollo 11 While he orbited the Moon Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first manned landing on the lunar surface He is one of only 24 humans to have flown to the Moon Prior to becoming an astronaut he had attended the United States Military Academy and from there he joined the United States Air Force and flew F86s at ChambleyBussieres Air Base France He was accepted to the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in 1960 He unsuccessfully applied for the second astronaut group but was accepted for the third group After retiring from NASA in 1970 he took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs A year later he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum He held this position until 1978 when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution In 1980 he took the job as Vice President of LTV Aerospace He resigned in 1985 to start his own business He was married to Patricia until her death in April 2014 and they had three children Kate Ann and Michael Jr Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Collinsastronaut licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia