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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, NY – September 28, 2018 – Walter Cunningham, lunar module pilot on the Apollo 7 mission, fighter pilot, physicist, and author of iBooks’ All-American Boys will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame held in the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. He was NASA's third civilian astronaut (after Neil Armstrong and Elliot See).
Cunningham received his B.A. with honors in 1960, and his M.A. with distinction in 1961, both in physics, from the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed all requirements save for the dissertation for a Ph.D. in physics at UCLA during his time at RAND Corporation, where he spent three years prior his NASA selection.
In October 1963, Cunningham was one of the third group of astronauts selected by NASA. On October 11, 1968, he occupied the Lunar Module Pilot seat for the eleven-day flight of Apollo 7, the first launch of a manned Apollo mission. The flight carried no Lunar Module and Cunningham was responsible for all spacecraft systems except launch and navigation. The crew kept busy with myriad system tests and successfully completed test firing of the service-module-engine ignition and measuring the accuracy of the spacecraft systems. Schirra, with a cold, ran afoul of NASA management during the flight, but Cunningham went on to head up the Skylab Branch of the Astronaut Office and left NASA in 1971.
He has accumulated more than 4,500 hours of flying time, including more than 3,400 in jet aircraft and 263 hours in space.
Cunningham is a member of numerous organizations. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, fellow of the American Astronautical Society, member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, American Geophysical Union, Explorers Club, Sigma Pi Sigma and Sigma Xi, Association of Space Explorers, Houston American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, Aviation Subcommittee, Houston Chamber of Commerce, Earth Awareness Foundation, National Association of Small Business Investment Companies.
The National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) is dedicated to honoring America’s aviation pioneers, those individuals who have made significant contributions to America’s rich legacy of air and space accomplishments through individual acts of great vision, technical innovation, skill and courage.
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