One of NASA’s first moon astronauts was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who died at age 90 on April 28, 2021, was the first human to orbit moon alone on July 20 and 21, 1969 as crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did the debut moonwalk on the surface.
On Monday (Jan. 30), Collins received modified funeral honors with funeral escort by the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard and the U.S. Air Force Ceremonial Brass Band. Collins’ daughter, Kathleen Collins, received the U.S. flag from her father’s funeral service, officials with Arlington wrote of the ceremony (opens in new tab) on Flickr. (Collins’ wife of 57 years, née Patricia Finnegan, predeceased him in 2014.)
“Collins received many awards and decorations throughout his career, including the Presidential Medal for Freedom,” Arlington officials wrote.
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By coincidence, Collins’ interment took place four days after the annual NASA Day of Remembrance for astronauts who gave their lives during spaceflight activities, which included ceremonies in Arlington Jan. 26.
Collins, a U.S. Air Force Major General, joined NASA in 1963 and also flew on the Earth-orbiting Gemini 10 mission. Prior to joining the agency, Collins was a fighter pilot and from 1959 to 1963 served as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The son of a U.S. Army major general, Michael Collins was born Oct. 31, 1930, in Rome, Italy. Collins moved with his family to the United States and enrolled at West Point Military Academy after high school. He received a bachelor of science degree in 1952 and subsequently joined the Air Force.
At NASA, Collins performed two spacewalks on Gemini 10 in July 1966 when extravehicular activities were in their infancy. He also was one of the capcoms (the astronaut communicating with the crew) in Mission Control during Apollo 8, which was the first spacecraft with humans on board to orbit the moon in December 1968.
Collins spent 21.5 hours alone in the command module of Apollo 11 while his crewmates were on the surface, including periods where he was cut off from all communication from Earth on the moon’s far side. He later wrote about that experience in his 1974 autobiography “Carrying the Fire (opens in new tab)“:
“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion [people] plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”
Collins retired from the Air Force and left NASA in 1970. He remained active in public service for decades, in positions such as assistant secretary of state for public affairs, the first director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, and undersecretary of the Smithsonian.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
