Neil Armstrong

Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who became the first person to walk on the Moon. Born on August 5, 1930, in rural Washington Township, Auglaize County, Ohio, and raised near Wapakoneta, he lived through the age when aviation and spaceflight moved from daring experiments to national goals. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor, roles that placed him close to the machines, risks, and calculations that defined mid-20th-century flight.

Armstrong’s interest in flying began early. His father, an auditor for the Ohio state government, moved the family around the state repeatedly, and Armstrong lived in 16 towns over 14 years. At age two, his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. At five or six, he took his first airplane ride in Warren, Ohio, in a Ford Trimotor known as the “Tin Goose.” As a youth he built and flew model aircraft. Back in Wapakoneta, he attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the local airfield. He earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday and soloed that August, before he had a driver’s license.

At 17, Armstrong entered Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering, with his tuition paid by the United States Navy under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator in 1950. During the Korean War, he flew the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier USS Essex. After the war, he completed his bachelor’s degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He flew Century Series fighters, piloted the North American X-15 seven times, and took part in the Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.

NASA selected Armstrong for its second astronaut group in 1962. His first spaceflight came in March 1966, when he served as command pilot of Gemini 8 and became NASA’s first civilian astronaut to fly in space. With pilot David Scott, he completed the first docking of two spacecraft. The mission was cut short after a stuck thruster caused a dangerous roll, and Armstrong used re-entry control fuel to stabilize the spacecraft. During training for Apollo 11, his second and final spaceflight, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before it crashed.

On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command Module Columbia. The next day, Armstrong and Aldrin spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle. When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The moment was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide and fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade ended.

After resigning from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He also served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the 1969 Collier Trophy, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, induction into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, and, with his Apollo 11 crewmates, the Congressional Gold Medal. Armstrong died on August 25, 2012, from complications after coronary bypass surgery. His words still carry because they joined a human act, a footstep, to a shared event watched across the world.