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Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta,
Ohio in 1930. After flying 78 missions as a U.S. Navy pilot in the Korean
War, he joined the NACA research agency (which became NASA in 1958) and
made four flights in the X-1B rocket plane in 1957-58. In April 1962,
while a NASA civilian test pilot at the Flight Research Center at Edwards,
Armstrong flew the X-15-3 rocketplane into the Earth's mesosphere, reaching
55 and 63 km altitude.
He then joined the NASA astronaut office in
Houston and, after serving as backup commander for Gemini 5, he flew in
space in March 1966 as commander of Gemini 8 which saw the first orbital
docking and the first emergency orbital spin recovery and return to Earth.
After two more backup slots on Gemini 11 and
Apollo 8, his second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11.
On 20 July 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on
another world, as Armstrong brought Eagle to a manual landing with only
20 seconds of fuel left. He then was the first human to walk on the lunar
surface. In 1971 he left NASA and returned to Ohio where he taught aeronautics
for several years.
On 24 August 2012, Neil Armstrong died of
complications from heart surgery in Columbus, Ohio, a few weeks after his
82nd birthday.
From Jonathan
McDowell, 5 September 2012 |
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