Wally Schirra

Flights count launches with a definitive outcome — the same basis as the Stats page.

Walter Marty Schirra Jr. 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 in 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 manned launch for the Apollo program.

Biography from Launch Library 2.

Born in

Hackensack

Education

New Jersey Institute of Technology; United States Naval Test Pilot School; United States Naval Academy; Dwight Morrow High School

Awards

New Jersey Hall of Fame; National Aviation Hall of Fame; International Space Hall of Fame; NASA Exceptional Service Medal; NASA Distinguished Service Medal; and 6 more

From Wikidata.

• Saturn IB | Apollo 7Commander · Success · with Donn F. Eisele, Walter CunninghamOctober 11, 1968
• Titan II GLV | Gemini VI-ACommand Pilot · Success · with Thomas P. StaffordDecember 15, 1965
• Atlas LV-3B | Mercury-Atlas 8Pilot · SuccessOctober 3, 1962