Original Apollo 7 astronaut, Wally Schirra, dies at 84

In October 1962, Schirra became the third American to orbit the Earth, encircling the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours.

He returned to space three years later as commander of Gemini 6 and guided his two-man capsule toward Gemini 7, already in orbit. On December 15, 1965, the two ships came within a few feet of each other as they shot through space, 185 miles above the Earth. It was the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit.

His final space flight in 1968 inaugurated the Apollo programme.