- Born
- Died
- Birth nameNeil Alden Armstrong
- Height5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
- Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 - August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer, and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
Armstrong was born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio. A graduate of Purdue University, he studied aeronautical engineering; his college tuition was paid for by the U.S. Navy under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier USS Essex. In September 1951, while making a low bombing run, Armstrong's aircraft was damaged when it collided with an anti-aircraft cable, strung across a valley, which cut off a large portion of one wing. Armstrong was forced to bail out. After the war, he completed his bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven times. He was also a participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.
Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thrust. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module Columbia. When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." It was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide. Apollo 11 effectively proved US victory in the Space Race, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy "of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon and received the 1969 Collier Trophy. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979, and with his former crew-mates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In 2012, Armstrong died due to complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery, at the age of 82.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bonitao
- SpousesCarol Held Knight(June 12, 1994 - August 25, 2012) (his death)Janet Armstrong(January 28, 1956 - April 12, 1994) (divorced, 3 children)
- Astronauts Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted a plaque on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. It reads: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.".
- NASA realized after the Apollo 11 mission had returned to Earth that they had no good pictures of the First Man on the Moon to show to the world. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin said later: "As the sequence of lunar operations evolved, Neil had the camera most of the time, and the majority of pictures taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of me. It wasn't until we were back on Earth and in the lunar receiving laboratory, looking over the pictures, that we realized there were few pictures of Neil. My fault, perhaps, but we had never simulated this in our training.".
- In 1979, while working on his farm in Lebanon, Ohio, he jumped off a grain tractor and his wedding ring was caught in the wheel, severing his ring finger. He managed to calmly collect the finger, pack it in ice and had it reattached by micro surgeons at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.
- A crater on the moon is named Armstrong after him.
- For the record, it was Neil Armstrong's left foot that first made contact with the surface of the moon.
- That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. [First words spoken on the moon. The speech as written by his wife read, "That's one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind". Unfortunately, he forgot the a in the between for and man, thus changing the meaning.]
- It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed. [First message to the Earth from the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle after landing on the Moon, 20 July 1969]
- Yeah, I wasn't chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn't planned by anyone.
- The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.
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