Quick Facts<\/h4>
| Nationality<\/td> | American \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8<\/td><\/tr> |
| Achievement<\/td> | First human to walk on the Moon (21 Jul 1969); NACA\/NASA test pilot, 200+ aircraft types; X-15 pilot<\/td><\/tr> |
| Test Flights<\/td> | 900+ test flights in 200+ aircraft types; X-15 reached 207,500 ft (63.2 km)<\/td><\/tr> |
| Apollo 11<\/td> | 16\u201324 Jul 1969 \u2014 first Moon landing; Armstrong walked on lunar surface 21 Jul<\/td><\/tr> |
| Born \/ Died<\/td> | 5 Aug 1930 \u2013 25 Aug 2012 (age 82)<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"Neil](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/0\/0d\/Neil_Armstrong_pose.jpg\/960px-Neil_Armstrong_pose.jpg\") Armstrong joined NACA \u2014 the predecessor to NASA \u2014 in 1955 as a research test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. He flew over 900 flights in more than 200 different aircraft types. He flew the Bell X-1B, the North American X-15 (reaching 207,500 feet \u2014 the boundary of space, by some definitions), the F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F5D Skylancer, B-29, B-47, and the revolutionary Paraglider Research Vehicle, among dozens of others. He could fly virtually anything, in virtually any condition, and analyse its behaviour with the precision of the engineer he also was.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n His astronaut career nearly ended in 1966. During the Gemini 8 mission, the spacecraft began spinning uncontrollably after docking with an Agena target vehicle. The spin increased to one revolution per second \u2014 fast enough to cause a loss of consciousness. Armstrong shut down the spacecraft’s main thrusters, isolated the problem to a stuck attitude-control thruster, and stabilised the spacecraft using the re-entry control system. The mission was terminated early, but both astronauts survived. NASA’s review board concluded his response had been “textbook.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The Longest Twelve Minutes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended toward the Moon’s surface in the Eagle lunar module on 20 July 1969, the guidance computer triggered a series of alarm codes that neither man had ever seen in training. Mission Control, in Houston, cleared them to continue. At 2,000 feet, Armstrong looked at the designated landing site and saw it was a boulder field. He took manual control and flew past it, searching for flat ground, with the fuel gauge counting down. He landed with 25 seconds of fuel remaining.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n \n \n\u201cThat’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Neil Armstrong \u2014 Mare Tranquillitatis, the Moon, 21 July 1969, 02:56 UTC<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Armstrong returned from the Moon and became, immediately, the most famous person on Earth \u2014 a role he found deeply uncomfortable. He gave almost no interviews and avoided public attention for the rest of his life. He taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He turned down nearly all requests for autographs after discovering signatures were being sold on the collectors’ market. He was private, precise, and completely uninterested in fame. What he was interested in \u2014 what had always driven him \u2014 was the work. The flying. The problem. The solution. Everything else was noise.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n |