The last surviving person from the first successful crewed space mission has passed away. The man was 90.
Bob Jacobs, a spokesman for Nasa, confirmed Cunningham's death but did not give any further information. Cunningham died on Tuesday but did not give a cause of death, according to his wife.
The Apollo 7 mission that Cunningham was a part of paved the way for the moon landing less than a year later.
A US air force major and a US navy captain crewed the mission with Cunningham. The lunar module pilot on the space flight was Cunningham.
They flew a perfect mission. During the Apollo 8 mission, the next crew was sent to the moon in order to get ready for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
The Apollo 7 astronauts won a special award for their daily television reports, during which they clowned around and held humorous signs.
It was the first crewed space mission since the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts.
Cunningham said that the Apollo 7 mission enabled them to overcome all the obstacles they had after the Apollo 1 fire and that it was the longest, most successful test flight of any flying machine ever.
After graduating from high school in California, Cunningham joined the navy and served as a marine corps pilot in Korea.
He obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also did PhD studies, and worked as a scientist for the RAND Corporation.
Cunningham told an interviewer a year before his death that he was poor and dreamed of flying planes.
Cunningham told the Spokesman-Review that he didn't know there were astronauts when he was a kid.
Cunningham was a public speaker and host of a radio show after he left Nasa. The All-American Boys was a memoir he wrote.
Cunningham was a supporter of space exploration. He told the paper that humans need to push out the levels at which they are living in space.
Cunningham is survived by his family.
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