Apollo 11’s commander took humanity’s first lunar steps
Neil Armstrong (5 August 1930–25 August 2012), Apollo 11 commander, was the first human to walk on the Moon, in July 1969. A naval aviator, test pilot and later professor, he had already flown Gemini 8, where he carried out the first docking of two spacecraft in 1966.
He was born in Washington Township, Auglaize County, Ohio, and after several family moves settled back in Wapakoneta in 1944. He took flying lessons at the local airfield, earned a student pilot certificate on his sixteenth birthday and soloed that August, before he could legally drive. An Eagle Scout, he later carried a World Scout Badge to the Moon. In 1947, at seventeen, he started aeronautical engineering at Purdue, choosing it over MIT, with the Navy covering tuition.
Called up in January 1949, he trained at Pensacola, became the youngest officer of the all-jet squadron VF-51, and first flew an F9F Panther on 5 January 1951. Over Korea, a booby-trap cable strung across hills sheared about 1.8 metres off his wing during a low bombing run; he nursed the jet back to friendly ground and ejected. He flew 78 missions totalling 121 hours before leaving active duty in 1952. Back at Purdue he lifted his grades, co-wrote student musicals and damaged the flying club’s Aeronca in a rough landing in a farm field.
Chosen with NASA’s second astronaut group in 1962, he flew Gemini 8 with David Scott in March 1966 as the agency’s first civilian in space; a stuck thruster sent the craft into a violent roll, and using re-entry fuel to stop it forced an early return. While training for Apollo he ejected from a lunar landing test vehicle moments before it crashed.
On 20 July 1969 he and Buzz Aldrin landed while Michael Collins circled in Columbia, and the next day they spent about two and a half hours outside Eagle. His ‘one small step’ line reached an estimated 530 million viewers. He later taught at Cincinnati until 1979, served on the Challenger inquiry, and died at 82 after heart bypass surgery.
Source: Neil Armstrong
