FAMEPedia:Today's featured article/May 16, 2021

Apollo 7 (October 11–22, 1968) was the first crewed flight in NASA's Apollo program. It was commanded by Wally Schirra, with command module pilot Donn F. Eisele and lunar module pilot R. Walter Cunningham, and saw the resumption of human spaceflight by the agency after the fire that killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts in January 1967. Determined to prevent a repetition of the fire, the crew spent long periods of time monitoring the construction of their Apollo command and service modules (CSM). After liftoff on October 11, 1968, extensive testing of the CSM took place, along with testing of techniques to be used on lunar missions, and also the first live television broadcast from an American spacecraft. Despite tension between the crew and ground controllers, the mission was a complete technical success, giving NASA the confidence to send Apollo 8 into orbit around the Moon two months later, but in part because of those tensions, no member of the crew flew in space again.