Who was Neil Armstrong ?

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.

In 1947, at age 17, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. He was the second person in his family to attend college. He was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but an uncle who had attended MIT dissuaded him from attending, telling him that it was not necessary to go all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a good education.

His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan. Successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by two years of flight training and one year of service in the U.S. Navy as an aviator, then completion of the final two years of their bachelor's degree. Armstrong did not take courses in naval science, nor did he join the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at Purdue.

Neil 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 Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis).

Armstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on January 26, 1949, requiring him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. After passing the medical examinations, he became a midshipman on February 24, 1949

At 10:56 PM EDT on July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped from the Eagle onto the Moon’s dusty surface with the words...

Flight training was conducted in a North American SNJ trainer, in which he soloed on September 9, 1949. On March 2, 1950, he made his first aircraft carrier landing on the USS Cabot, an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight.

“That’s one small step for 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.

He was then sent to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for training on the Grumman F8F Bearcat, culminating in a carrier landing on the USS Wright. On August 16, 1950, Armstrong was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. His mother and sister attended his graduation ceremony on August 23, 1950.

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.

Neil 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 endeavours.

Armstrong's assignment was to Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron 7 (FASRON 7) at NAS San Diego (now known as NAS North Island). On November 27, 1950, he was assigned to VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer, and made his first flight in a jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on January 5, 1951.

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 was promoted to ensign on June 5, 1951, and made his first jet carrier landing on USS Essex two days later. On June 28, 1951, Essex had set sail for Korea, with VF-51 aboard to act as ground-attack aircraft. VF-51 flew ahead to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii, where it conducted fighter-bomber training before rejoining the ship at the end of July.

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.

On August 29, 1951, Armstrong saw action in the Korean War as an escort for a photo reconnaissance plane over Songjin. Five days later, on September 3, he flew armed reconnaissance over the primary transportation and storage facilities south of the village of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan.