Wally Schirra, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Wally Schirra

American astronaut

Date of Birth: 12-Mar-1923

Place of Birth: Hackensack, New Jersey, United States

Date of Death: 03-May-2007

Profession: astronaut, businessperson, test pilot, aircraft pilot, United States Naval Aviator, aerospace engineer, autobiographer

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Walter Marty Schirra Jr.
(, March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007) (Captain, USN, Ret.) was an American naval aviator and NASA astronaut.
In 1959, he became one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, which was the United States' first effort to put human beings into space.
On October 3, 1962, he flew the six-orbit, nine-hour, Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, in a spacecraft he nicknamed Sigma 7.
At the time of his mission in Sigma 7, Schirra became the fifth American and ninth human to travel into space.
In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 foot (30 cm) of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965.
In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module and the first crewed launch for the Apollo program. He was the first astronaut to go into space three times, and the only astronaut to have flown in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
In total, Schirra logged 295 hours and 15 minutes in space.
After Apollo 7, he retired as a captain from the U.S.
Navy as well as from NASA, subsequently becoming a consultant to CBS News in the network's coverage of following Apollo flights.
Schirra joined Walter Cronkite as co-anchor for all seven of NASA's Moon landing missions.