Michael Collins (astronaut) Michael Collins (astronaut) Michael Collins (born October 31, 1930) (Major General, USAF, Retired) is an American former astronaut and test pilot. 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 two rendezvous with different spacecraft and undertook two extra-vehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). 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 Lunar Module to
Buzz Aldrin sighting. Aldrin confirmed that there was no such sighting of anything deemed extraterrestrial and said they were, and are, "99.9 percent" sure that the object was the detached panel. In an interview with the Science Channel, Aldrin mentioned seeing unidentified objects, but according to Aldrin his words had been taken out of context. He made a request to the Science Channel to clarify to viewers that he did not see alien spacecraft but was refused. In December 2016, Aldrin was part of a tourist group visiting the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica when he fell ill and was evacuated,