The Passing Of Wally Schirra

All Hail The Mercury Seven


Wally Schirra, he of the Mercury Seven with 'the Right Stuff' passed away.

Schirra was one of the seven young men selected in 1959 to lead the Cold War
space race against the Soviet Union. Only John Glenn and Scott Carpenter remain
from the project. He was born in March 1923 into an aviation family, Schirra
was one of the seven Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959. He then
piloted the Sigma 7 Mercury flight in late 1962, which orbited Earth six
times.

That flight lasted 9 hours, 15 minutes and attained a speed of 28,091km/h at an altitude of 280 km. It travelled almost 230,400 km before re-entry.
Schirra was the command pilot on the historic 1965 Gemini 6 flight. The highlight was a successful rendezvous of Gemini 6 with the already orbiting Gemini 7 spacecraft. This was the first rendezvous of two manned manoeuvrable spacecraft and established another space first for the United States.

In 1968 he was the command pilot on Apollo VII. Schirra had logged a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space. He was the only astronaut to have flown Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions.

In 1969 Schirra retired from the US Navy and NASA. According to his family, Schirra died of natural causes.

Farewell, and godspeed, Wally.