Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer. He was the first person to walk on the Moon. Armstrong was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
About Neil Armstrong in brief
Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer. He was the first person to walk on the Moon. Armstrong was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. Armstrong died in 2012 at the age of 87. He is survived by his wife, Susan, and two sons, Neil and Dean. The Armstrong family is buried in Ohio, near Wapakoneta, Ohio, where he grew up. The family moved around the state repeatedly, living in 16 towns over the next 14 years. Armstrong’s love for flying grew when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. He earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed in August, all before he had a driver’s license. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon in 1971. He died in 2011 at age 87. His son, Neil Armstrong Jr., is the son of Viola Louise and Stephen Koenig Armstrong, and the brother of Dean Armstrong, who is also a former astronaut. The couple had a son, David, who died in 2010 at age 83.
The son was the second person in his family to attend college, but he resolved to go to Purdue after watching a football game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Boilermaker Stadium in 1945, in which Bob DeMoss led the Ohio Buckeyes to a sound victory over the West Michigan Wolverines. He had a younger sister, June, and a younger brother, Dean. His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government, and his family moved to 16 towns in Ohio. Armstrong had his first airplane flight when he was five or six, when he took a ride in a Ford Trimotor in Warren, Ohio. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, and was a participant in the U.S. Air Force’s Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs. 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 training for Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash. He 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. On July 18, 1969, he sent attendees at the National Scout Jamboree to the Moon with his regards to a few personal items that he carried with him. While flying toward the Moon, he was recognized by the National Scouts with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award.
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