Michael Collins Signed Photograph.

Michael Collins is an astronaut, test pilot and major general of the United States Air Force Reserves. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew into space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two different spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities. His second spaceflight was as the command module pilot for Apollo 11. While he stayed in orbit around the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left in the Apollo Lunar Module to make the first crewed landing on its surface. Collins is one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, which he orbited thirty times. He was the seventeenth American in space, the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk, and, after Young, who flew the command module on Apollo 10, the second person to orbit the Moon alone.