What is Walter Cunningham known for?

Walter Cunningham was an American astronaut, fighter pilot, physicist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author.

Walter Cunningham is known for being NASA’s third civilian astronaut after Neil Armstrong and Elliot See and he piloted the Apollo 7 lunar module on the 1968 mission.

On October 11, 1968, he took the command of the Lunar Module Pilot for the eleven-day flight of Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission.

Walter Cunningham was in charge of all spacecraft systems except launch and navigation on this flight, which did not include a Lunar Module.

The crew kept busy with a slew of system tests, including a successful test firing of the service module’s engine and measuring the accuracy of the spacecraft’s systems.

Walter Cunningham went on to lead the Astronaut Office’s Skylab Branch after the mission and left NASA in 1971.

Walter Cunningham has over 4,500 hours of flight time, including over 3,400 hours in jet aircraft and 263 hours in space.

In 2008, NASA awarded Cunningham the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his Apollo 7 mission

In 2018, Cunningham joined the Back to Space organization as an Astronaut Consultant with the goal of inspiring the next generation to go to Mars.