Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who piloted the ship from which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left to make their historic first steps on the moon in 1969, died Wednesday (US time) of cancer, his family said. He was 90.
Collins was part of the three-man Apollo 11 crew that effectively ended the space race between the United States and Russia and fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's challenge to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s.
Though he traveled some 383,023km to the moon and came within 111km, Collins never set foot on the lunar surface like his crewmates Aldrin and Armstrong, who died in 2012. None of the men flew in space after the Apollo 11 mission.
![Apollo 11 astronauts from left, Col. Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, lunar module pilot; Neil Armstrong, flight commander; and Lt. Michael Collins, command module pilot. Photo / AP](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/YF43Z5NBOOG6DUUNB3WXTWGPRU.jpg?auth=bda4ae48962efdd7a8cca62d36c43a9723accaa67b7f993dc386569a390ac5ea&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)
"It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand," Collins said on the 10th anniversary of the moon landing in 1979. "Exploration is not a choice really — it's an imperative, and it's simply a matter of timing as to when the option is exercised."