Neil Armstrong

An American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon.

Biography

A graduate of Purdue University, he studied aeronautical engineering with his college tuition paid for by the U.S. Navy under the Holloway Plan. Armstrong 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, he was hit by anti-aircraft fire while making a low bombing run, and 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 commander 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, but the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his reentry control fuel to prevent a dangerous spin caused by a stuck thruster. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11, the first manned Moon landing. During training for the mission, he was forced to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a fiery crash. In July 1969, Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface, and spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, which he held until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation, and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He acted as a spokesman for several businesses, and appeared in advertising for Chrysler starting in January 1979.

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