Michael Collins (1930-2021), born in Rome to an American military family, served as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base before joining NASA in 1963. As pilot of Gemini 10 in 1966 he carried out two spacewalks. Command module pilot on Apollo 11, he remained alone in lunar orbit aboard Columbia while his crewmates walked on the Moon. After the mission he became director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, overseeing the construction of its landmark building. His autobiography Carrying the Fire (1974) is widely regarded as the finest memoir ever written by an astronaut.