Pioneering Astronaut Famed For Orbital Handshake With Soviets Dies at 93

The legendary NASA astronaut Tom Stafford, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his famed handshake in space with a Soviet cosmonaut amid Cold War tensions, died Monday at 93, his namesake museum announced.

Stafford died in Indian Harbour Beach—a coastal city fittingly located in the heart of Florida’s “Space Coast,” just 20 miles south of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in his hometown of Weatherford, Oklahoma, told News 9 that Stafford died after battling an “extended illness.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.