Michael Collins, astronaut who became the ‘forgotten man’ of the Apollo 11 Moon landing – obituary

Michael Collins, who has died aged 90, piloted the command module Columbia on the Apollo 11 mission which landed the first men on the Moon in July 1969.

While his fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin flew off in the lunar landing module Eagle to earn their indelible place in the history of space exploration, Collins remained in the command module – and became the “forgotten man” in the most famous space flight in history.

Columbia and Collins orbited the Moon 30 times as during a moonwalk that lasted two hours and 19 minutes the two astronauts on the surface collected soil and rock samples, took photographs and video images, and planted equipment and the Stars and Stripes in the lunar soil. Back on Earth, hundreds of millions of people followed their progress on live television broadcasts.

During each orbit of the Moon, Collins was out of radio contact with Earth for 48 minutes. He later said that during these periods he felt not loneliness but “awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation”. Throughout, however, he worried about the safety of his two colleagues on the Moon’s surface.

In particular, Collins was concerned about the reliability of Eagle’s ascent engine. Should it fail to ignite, Armstrong and Aldrin would be stranded, with no hope of rescue before their oxygen ran out.

If it did ignite, but failed to burn for at least seven minutes, the two astronauts would crash-land back on the Moon or be condemned to a low orbit around it. Collins believed that the chances of Armstrong and Aldrin making it back to Earth were only 50-50, and was – in his own words – “sweating like a nervous bride” as he waited to hear from Eagle.

Having completed their mission, Armstrong and Aldrin successfully brought Eagle back to Columbia for the flight home. Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific 195 hours, 18 minutes and 21 seconds after its epic journey had begun.

Having landed upside down within a mile of the waiting US aircraft carrier Hornet, the astronauts quickly righted their space vehicle and then went aboard the ship to be welcomed personally by President Richard Nixon.

Following 18 days’ quarantine, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins enjoyed tickertape parades in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York and went on a 22-nation tour. The mission was the culmination of the Apollo programme and the fulfilment of the assassinated President John Kennedy’s promise in 1961 to “land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth this decade”.

Collins later confessed to feeling a sense of anti-climax after the astronauts’ achievement. “I just can’t get excited about things the way I could before Apollo 11,” he said. “I seemed gripped by an earthly ennui which I don’t relish but which I seem powerless to prevent.”

At the same time, he declared that he was “more impervious to minor problems now; when two of my people come to me red-faced and huffing over some petty dispute, I feel like telling them, ‘Well, the Earth continues to turn on its axis, undisturbed by your problem; take your cue from it and work it out by yourselves; it doesn’t really amount to much anyway’. My threshold of what is important has been raised.”

Before the mission, Nasa had offered Collins the role of back-up commander of Apollo 14, and commander of Apollo 17. He declined, explaining that he wanted to spend more time with his family and would be leaving Nasa. Another reason was his wife’s desire to leave Texas and what she saw as the febrile atmosphere of the space programme at Houston.

Michael Collins was born on October 31 1930 in Rome, where his father, Major-General James Collins of the US Army, was the American military attaché. Over the years, the major-general’s various postings took the family from Italy to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Governor’s Island in New York City, Fort Sam in Houston, San Juan and then Washington. Michael was educated at St Albans in Washington, where he was noted for his reserve, self-possession and a gift for mathematics. From his mother Virginia he inherited a love of books and music.

Collins went on to the US Military Academy at West Point, graduating with a Science degree, then joined the US Air Force. Serving with the 21st Bomb Wing at its base in Chaumont-Semoutiers, France, from 1954 to 1957, he once had to bail out when the fuel tank behind his cockpit exploded.

After completing the necessary 1,500 flying hours, in 1960 he returned to the US to join the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

It was there that he met an old friend, Bill Dana, who was by now a Nasa test pilot. Collins joined Nasa early in 1963, and in July 1966 was aboard Gemini 10, which orbited the earth for three days. With Collins on the mission was Commander John Young of the US Navy, and the two men successfully docked with an Agena Target Vehicle, proving that spaceships could be refuelled in flight. Collins also became the first astronaut to work outside a spaceship twice during the same mission.

He was due to be part of the crew of Apollo 8, but was temporarily grounded when he had to have an operation to fuse two vertebrae. While Apollo 8 was orbiting the Moon in December 1968, Collins was watching its progress from the ground. Only a month later, however, Nasa announced that he would join Armstrong and Aldrin on Apollo 11.

Having left Nasa, in 1970 Collins accepted an invitation from the Nixon administration to become Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, a public relations job with the purpose of opening “the lines of communication between the State Department and the American public, particularly the youth of America”. The family moved to Washington.

Collins did not enjoy the job – describing it as “a plush purgatory” – and a year later he left to run the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where he remained until 1980, initially as director and later as the Smithsonian’s under-secretary. In 1974 he took a course in advanced management at Harvard Business School.

Collins later became vice-president of the Vought Corporation, the aerospace firm, in Arlington, Virginia, then established his own aviation and space consulting firm, Michael Collins Associates, in Washington and North Carolina.

As well as writing a well-received autobiography, Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (1974), he was the author of a children’s book, Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places (1976), and other books on the American space story and the future of space travel.

Among many awards, Collins received the Nasa Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Of his place in the history of space flight, Collins said in 2009: “It was 10 per cent shrewd planning and 90 per cent blind luck. Put Lucky on my tombstone.”

Michael Collins married, in 1957, Patricia Finnegan, of Boston; she predeceased him, as did their son, and their two daughters survive him.

Michael Collins, born October 31 1930, died April 28 2021