Michael Collins
Command Module Pilot
Astronaut Michael Collins was Born October 31, 1930 in Rome, Italy. He received a Bachelor’s degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. in 1952. Before joining NASA, Collins served as a fighter pilot and an experimental test pilot from 1959 to 1963.
Collins was selected to be an astronaut by NASA in October of 1963. He served as pilot on the Gemini 10 mission with John Young in 1966. His second, most famous, flight was as command module pilot of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in July 1969. He remained in lunar orbit to run scientific experiments while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon.
