Space pioneer Wally Schirra dead at 84

HOUSTON, May 3 (Reuters) US space pioneer Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts who flew NASA's earliest flights, has died at the age of 84, NASA said today.

Schirra been suffering from cancer and died yesterday night, NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said.

He lived in Rancho Santa Fe, California near San Diego, but Hartsfield said he could not confirm that he died there.

Schirra was the only astronaut to fly on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights. His Apollo 7 mission in October 1968 was the first flight after the Apollo 1 tragedy in January 1967 in which three astronauts burned to death in their space capsule on the launch pad.

That 10-day flight tested procedures and equipment used later on flights to the moon.

Schirra, who was born in Hackensack, New Jersey on March 12, 1923, was a Navy test pilot when he joined NASA in April 1959.

The Mercury 7 astronauts included Schirra, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Deke Slayton, Alan Shepherd and Scott Carpenter.

They became national heroes as NASA used them to promote the fledgling space program in a race against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Of the seven original astronauts, only Glenn, 85, and Carpenter, 82, are still alive.

''With the passing of Wally Schirra, we at NASA note with sorrow the loss of yet another of the pioneers of human space flight,'' NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a statement. ''We who have inherited the space program will always be in his debt.'' Schirra's other two space flights included an October 1962 Mercury flight in which he orbited Earth six times and the Gemini 6 flight in December 1965 in which he and Thomas Stafford directed a space rendezvous with Gemini 7.

He was known not only for his competence as a pilot and astronaut, but as jokester and storyteller.

NASA said one of his best known anecdotes arose from the constant examinations and demands for bodily fluids from the Mercury 7 as they trained to go to space.

''When one nurse insisted he provide a urine sample, Schirra reportedly filled a five-gallon jug with warm water, detergent and iodine and left it on her desk,'' NASA said in a press release.

Schirra retired from NASA in 1969 and joined CBS News, where he worked alongside newscaster Walter Cronkite as they covered the Apollo missions to the moon.

REUTERS RS BST0010