Neil Alden Armstrong August 5, β August 25, was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, in , became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator , test pilot , and university professor. Armstrong was born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
He entered Purdue University , studying aeronautical engineering , with the U. Navy paying his tuition under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in and a naval aviator the following year. He was also a participant in the U. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March , becoming NASA 's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott , he performed the first docking of two spacecraft ; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster.
During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11 , he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash. When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
Apollo 11 was a major U. Kennedy "of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission , which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In , Armstrong died because of complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery , at the age of His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government , [ 9 ] and the family moved around the state repeatedly, living in 16 towns over the next 14 years.
When he was five or six, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio , when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor also known as the "Tin Goose". The family's last move was in and took them back to Wapakoneta, where Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the Wapakoneta airfield.
