Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who became first to walk on the moon as commander of
Apollo 11, has died. He was 82 years old.
Armstrong had heart surgery several weeks ago, and a statement from his family said he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.
"Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said. "He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. ... He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits."
On July 20, 1969, half a billion people -- a sixth of the world's population at the time -- watched a ghostly black-and-white television image as Armstrong backed down the ladder of the lunar landing ship Eagle, planted his left foot on the moon's surface, and said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Twenty minutes later his crewmate,
Buzz Aldrin, joined him, and the world watched as the men spent the next two hours bounding around in the moon's light gravity, taking rock samples, setting up experiments, and taking now-iconic photographs.
"Isn't this fun?" Armstrong said over his radio link to Aldrin. The third member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael L. Collins, orbited 60 miles overhead in the mission's command ship, Columbia. President Richard Nixon called their eight-day trip to the moon "the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation."
Armstrong Reads Plaque Dedicated to Mission
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'I Believe That This Nation Should Commit Itself....'
Armstrong's step fulfilled a challenge laid down by an earlier president, John F. Kennedy, in May 1961. Struggling in his first months in the White House, Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress:
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth," he said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
Armstrong was a 30-year-old test pilot at the time of Kennedy's challenge, flying the X-15 rocket plane for a new government agency called
NASA. He had served as a Naval aviator in the Korean War, flying 78 missions, and had an engineering degree from Purdue University. A native of the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, he was married to the former Jan Shearon and living near Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of California.
NASA already had seven astronauts, flying its
Mercuryspace capsule. In 1962 it sent out word that it was looking for more, and Armstrong was one of the nine it selected.
Gemini VIII
On March 16, 1966 he became the first American civilian to orbit the earth, commanding the two-man Gemini VIII mission with David R. Scott as his crewmate. On their fourth orbit, they made the first-ever docking in space with another spacecraft -- a maneuver the still-untested Apollo project would need to get astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface.
Minutes later, though, the spacecraft began to tumble wildly out of control, apparently because of a broken maneuvering thruster. It was a dangerous moment -- a 6,000-pound ship, moving at 17,500 mph, spinning and turning end-over-end once a second. Armstrong ended the emergency by using a second set of thrusters. Mission Control ordered the astronauts to land as soon as possible, and after 10 hours of flight they splashed down safely in the Pacific.
The two astronauts were commended for keeping their cool in a difficult situation, and when Project Apollo began, Armstrong was assigned to command one of the first six flights. At the time this was not momentous news. NASA had a system for rotating its crews among flights -- one served as backup crew for a mission and then actually flew three flights later -- and nobody knew how many test flights would be needed before the first moon landing could be attempted.au
