Neil Armstrong Early life and career | Neil Armstrong Moon landing | Timeline of the Apollo program

Neil Armstrong (born August 5, 1930, Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.—died August 25, 2012, Cincinnati, Ohio) was a U.S. astronaut, and the first person to set foot on the Moon.

Early life and career –

Neil Armstrong was the eldest of three children born to Viola Louise Engel and Stephen Koenig Armstrong, a state auditor. Neil's passion for aviation and flight was kindled when he took his first airplane ride at age 6. He was active in the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank attainable. He became a licensed pilot on his 16th birthday and a naval air cadet in 1947. His studies in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University_ in West Lafayette, Indiana, were interrupted in 1950 by his service in the Korean War, during which he was shot down once and was awarded three Air Medals. He completed his degree in 1955 and immediately became a civilian research pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He flew more than 1,100 hours, testing various supersonic fighters as well as the X-15 rocket plane.

In 1962 Armstrong joined the space program with its second group of astronauts. On March 16, 1966, Armstrong, as command pilot of Gemini 8, and David R. Scott rendezvoused with an unmanned Agena rocket and completed the first manual space docking maneuver. After the docking, a rocket thruster malfunction sent the spacecraft into an uncontrolled spin and forced them to separate from the Agena. Armstrong then regained control of the Gemini craft and made an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Moon landing –

On July 16, 1969, Armstrong, along with Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, blasted off in the Apollo 11 vehicle toward the Moon (see Apollo program). Four days later, at 4:17 PM U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the Eagle lunar landing module, guided manually by Armstrong, touched down on a plain near the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis). At 10:56 PM EDT on July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped from the Eagle onto the Moon's dusty surface with the words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." (In the excitement of the moment, Armstrong skipped the "a" in the statement that he had prepared.) Armstrong and Aldrin left the module for more than two hours and deployed scientific instruments, collected surface samples, and took numerous photographs.

On July 21, after 21 hours and 36 minutes on the Moon, they lifted off to rendezvous with Collins and begin the voyage back to Earth. After splashdown in the Pacific at 12:51 PM EDT on July 24, the three astronauts spent 18 days in quarantine to guard against possible contamination by lunar microbes. During the days that followed, and during a tour of 21 nations, they were hailed for their part in the opening of a new era in human exploration of the universe.

Timeline of the Apollo program –

Between 1968 and 1972, 24 Apollo astronauts visited the Moon, and 12 of them walked on its surface. Scroll through the timeline of the Apollo missions that led the United States to land the first humans on the Moon, and see how Armstrong fits into this storied history.

Later career –

Armstrong resigned from NASA in 1971. After Apollo 11 he shied away from being a public figure and confined himself to academic and professional endeavors. From 1971 to 1979 he was professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). After 1979 Armstrong served as chairman or director for a number of companies, among them Computing Technologies for Aviation from 1982 to 1992 and AIL Systems (later EDO Corporation), a maker of electronic equipment for the military, from 1977 until his retirement in 2002. He also served on the National Commission on Space (NCOS), a panel charged with setting goals for the space program, and on the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, the group appointed in 1986 to analyze the safety failures in the Challenger disaster. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

Apollo 11

United States spaceflight –

Apollo 11, U.S. spaceflight during which commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin ("Buzz") Aldrin, Jb, on July 20, 1969, became the first people to land on the Moon and walk the lunar surface. Apollo 11 was the culmination of the Apollo ugram and a massive national commitment by the United States to beat the Soviet Union in putting people on the Moon. All told, 24 Apollo astronauts visited the Moon and 12 of them walked on its surface. Additional NASA astronauts are scheduled to return to the Moon by 2025 as part of the Artemis space program.

From the time of its launch on July 16, 1969, until the return splashdown on July 24, almost every major aspect of the flight of Apollo 11 was witnessed via television by hundreds of millions of people in nearly every part of the globe. The pulse of humanity rose with the giant, Ill-metre- (363-foot-) high, 3,038,500-kg (6,698,700-pound) Saturn V launch vehicle as it made its flawless flight from Pad 39A at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida, before hundreds of thousands of spectators. So accurate was the translunar insertion that three of the en route trajectory corrections planned were not necessary. Aboard Apollo 11 were Armstrong, Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins. Their enthusiasm was evident from the beginning, as Armstrong exclaimed, "This Saturn gave us a magnificent ride....lt was beautiful! "

The third stage of the Saturn then fired to start the crew on their 376,400-km (234,000-mile) journey to the Moon. The three astronauts conducted their transposition and docking maneuvers, first turning the command module, Columbia, and its attached service module around and then extracting the lunar module from its resting place above the Saturn's third stage. On their arrival the astronauts slowed the spacecraft so that it would go into lunar orbit. Apollo 11 entered first an elliptical orbit 114 by 313 km (71 by 194 miles) and then a nearly circular orbit between 100 and 122 km (62 and 76 miles) above the surface of the Moon.

On the morning of July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin crawled from the command module through an interconnecting tunnel into the lunar module, Eagle. Toward the end of the 12th lunar orbit, the Apollo 11 spacecraft became two separate spacecraft: Columbia, piloted by Collins, and Eagle, occupied by Armstrong and Aldrin.

By firing Eagle's propulsion system, the two astronauts changed from their nearly circular orbit to an elliptical course whose closest approach to the Moon was only 15,000 metres (50,000 feet). At this low point they again fired their engine, this time to undergo the powered descent initiation maneuver. Five times during the descent, the guidance computer triggered an alarm (called "1202" or "1201") that its memory was full, but NASA simulations before the mission showed that a landing could still happen despite the alarm, and thus Mission Control told the astronauts to continue the descent. At about 150 metres (500 feet) above the surface, Armstrong began maneuvering the craft manually (although the main engine continued under automatic control) to avoid landing in a rock-strewn crater.

For about a minute and a half, Armstrong hovered Eagle, moving it laterally with the reaction control system until he found a clear area on which to descend. Then the contact light went on inside the cockpit, as the 172-cm (68-inch) probes dangling below Eagle's footpads signaled contact with the ground. One second later the descent rocket engine was cut off, as the astronauts gazed down onto a sheet of lunar soil blown radially in all directions. Armstrong then radioed at 4:17 PM U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Eagle had touched down in the Sea of Tranquility_, an area selected for its level and smooth terrain.

At 10:56 PM EDT on July 20, Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar soil with the words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." (In the excitement of the moment, Armstrong skipped the "a" in the statement that he had prepared.) He immediately described the surface as "fine and powdery" and said that there was no difficulty moving about. Aldrin joined his companion about 20 minutes later.