Neil Alden
Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong
was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War. After the
war, he earned his bachelor's degree at Purdue
University and served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he
logged over 900 flights. He later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California.
A participant
in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human
spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. He made his first space
flight, as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966,
becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. On this mission, he
performed the first docking of two spacecraft, with pilot David Scott.[1]
Armstrong's
second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing, in
July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to
the lunar surface and spent two and a half hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the
Command Module. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon; President Jimmy Carter presented
Armstrong the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978; he
and his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
Armstrong died
in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 25,
2012, at the age of 82, after complications from coronary artery bypass surgery.[2][3]
Neil Armstrong
was born on August 5, 1930, to Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel
in Auglaize County, near Wapakoneta,
Ohio.[4][5] He was of Scottish, Irish, and German ancestry and
had two younger siblings, June and Dean. Stephen Armstrong worked as an auditor[6] for the Ohio
state government; the family moved around the state repeatedly after
Armstrong's birth, living in 20 towns. Neil's love for flying grew during this
time, having gotten off to an early start when his father took his two-year-old
son to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five, he experienced
his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio on
July 20, 1936 when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor, also known as
the "Tin Goose".[7]
His father's
last move was in 1944, back to Neil's birthplace, Wapakoneta, in Auglaize
County. Armstrong attended Blume High
School and took flying lessons at the grassy Wapakoneta airfield.[5] He earned a
student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed later in
August; all before he had a driver's license.[8] Armstrong was
active in the Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult,
he was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with its Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award.[9] On
July 18, 1969, while flying towards the Moon inside the Columbia,
Armstrong greeted the Scouts: "I'd like to say hello to all my fellow
Scouts and Scouters at Farragut State Park in Idaho having a National Jamboree there this
week; and Apollo 11 would like to send them best wishes". Houston
replied: "Thank you, Apollo 11. I'm sure that, if they didn't hear
that, they'll get the word through the news. Certainly appreciate that."[10] Among the very
few personal items that Neil Armstrong carried with him to the Moon and back
was a World Scout Badge.[11]
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). The only engineer he knew (who had attended MIT)
dissuaded him from attending, telling Armstrong that it was not necessary to go
all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a good
education.[12] His college
tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan: successful applicants committed to
two years of study, followed by three years of service in the U.S. Navy, then
completion of the final two years of the degree. At Purdue, he earned average
marks in his subjects, with a GPA that rose and fell during eight semesters. He was
awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1955, and a
Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.[13] Armstrong was
later awarded honorary doctorates by several universities.[14]
In 1958, he was
selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest program. In November 1960,
Armstrong was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane under
development by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, and on March 15, 1962,
he was selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of seven pilot-engineers who would
fly the space plane when it got off the design board.[41]
In the months
after the announcement that applications were being sought for the second group
of NASA astronauts, Armstrong became more and more excited about the prospects
of both the Apollo program and of investigating a new
aeronautical environment. Armstrong's astronaut application arrived about a
week past the June 1, 1962, deadline. Dick Day, with whom Armstrong
had worked closely at Edwards, saw the late arrival of the application and
slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed.[42] At Brooks Air Force Base at the end of June, Armstrong
underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and
at times seemingly pointless.[43]
Deke Slayton called
Armstrong on September 13, 1962, and asked whether he would be
interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed
"the New Nine"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The
selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports
had been circulating since earlier that year that he would be selected as the
"first civilian astronaut."[44] Armstrong was
one of two civilian pilots selected for the second group; the other was Elliot See, also a former
naval aviator.[45] See was
scheduled to command Gemini 9, but died in a T-38 crash in 1966 that also took the life of crewmate
Charles Bassett. Armstrong was the first American
civilian in space, but the first civilian was Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union, nearly three
years earlier. A textile worker and amateur parachutist, she was aboard Vostok 6 when it
launched on June 16, 1963.
During
the Apollo 11 launch, Armstrong's heart reached a top rate of 110
beats per minute.[67] He
found the first stage to be the loudest—much noisier than the Gemini 8
Titan II launch—and the Apollo CSM was relatively roomy compared to the
Gemini capsule. This ability to move around was suspected to be the reason why
none of the Apollo 11 crew suffered from space sickness,
while members of previous crews did. Armstrong was especially happy, as he had
been prone to motion sickness as a child and could
experience nausea
after doing long periods of aerobatics.[68]
The
objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than to touch down
with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn,
Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which
meant the Eagle would probably touch down beyond the planned landing
zone by several miles.[69] As
the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several
computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202
alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin was
aware of what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles
Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202
and 1201 alarms were caused by an executive overflow in the lunar module computer. As
described by Buzz Aldrin in the documentary In the Shadow of the
Moon, the overflow condition was caused by his own
counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing
process, so the computer had to process unnecessary radar data and did not have
enough time to execute all tasks, dropping lower-priority ones. Aldrin stated
that he did so with the objective of facilitating re-docking with the CM should
an abort become necessary, not realizing that it would cause the overflow
condition.
When
Armstrong noticed they were heading towards a landing area which he believed
was unsafe, he took over manual control of the LM, and attempted to find an
area which seemed safer, taking longer than expected, and longer than most
simulations had taken.[70] For
this reason, there was concern from mission control that the LM was running low
on fuel.[71]
Upon landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had about 40 seconds
worth of fuel left, including the 20 seconds worth of fuel which had to be
saved in the event of an abort.[72]
During training, Armstrong had landed the LLTV with less than 15 seconds
left on several occasions, and he was also confident the LM could survive a
straight-down fall from 50 feet (15 m) if needed. Analysis after the
mission showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn
time left.[73]
The
landing on the surface of the Moon occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on
July 20, 1969,[74] at
which time one of three 67-inch (1.7 m)-long probes attached to three of
the Lunar Module's four legs made contact with the surface, a panel light
inside the LM lit up, and Aldrin called out, "Contact light."
Armstrong shut the engine off and said, "shutdown." As the LM settled
onto the surface, Aldrin said, "Okay. Engine stop", then they both
called out some post-landing checklist items. After a ten-second pause, Duke
acknowledged the landing with, "We copy you down, Eagle."
Armstrong announced the landing to Mission Control and the world with the
words, "Houston, Tranquility
Base here. The Eagle has landed." Aldrin and
Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back before quickly
returning to the checklist of tasks needed to ready the lunar module for
liftoff from the Moon should an emergency unfold during the first moments on
the lunar surface.[75][76][77]
After Armstrong had confirmed touch-down, Duke re-acknowledged, and expressed
the flight controllers' anxiety: "Roger, ... Tranquility. We copy you
on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing
again. Thanks a lot.".[72]
Although
the official NASA flight plan called for a crew rest period before extra-vehicular activity,
Armstrong requested that the EVA be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time.
Once Armstrong and Aldrin were ready to go outside, Eagle was depressurized,
the hatch was opened and Armstrong made his way down the ladder first.
At
the bottom of the ladder, Armstrong said "I'm going to step off the LEM
now" (referring to the Apollo Lunar Module). He then turned and
set his left boot on the surface at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969,[78]
then spoke the famous words "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant
leap for mankind."[79]
Armstrong
did not prepare his famous epigram in advance. In a 1983 interview
with George Plimpton in Esquire
Magazine, it was revealed that Armstrong "had produced the
lines on his own ... and the words were composed not on the long trip up
there, as had been supposed by most of his colleagues, nor beforehand but after
the actual landing of Eagle on the moon's surface." He explained to
Plimpton that "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to
return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touchdown on the
moon surface were about even money—fifty-fifty ... Most people don't
realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much
point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing."[80]
Recordings
of Armstrong's transmission do not evidence the indefinite article
"a" before "man", though NASA and Armstrong insisted for
years that static had obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a
mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, he eventually admitted he
must have dropped the "a".[79] He
later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping
the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not
said—although it might actually have been".[81]
It
has since been claimed that acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the
presence of the missing "a";[79][82]
Peter Shann Ford, an Australia-based computer programmer, conducted a digital
audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did, in fact, say "a man",
but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications
technology of the time.[79][83][84]
Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these
findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own
analysis.[85]
Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive."[86]
However, the article by Ford was published on Ford's own web site rather than
in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and linguists David
Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their
skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language
Log.[87]
Thus, NASA's transcript continues to show the "a" in parentheses.[88]
When
Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice
of America was rebroadcast live via the BBC and
many other stations worldwide. The estimated global audience at that moment was
450 million listeners,[89]
out of a then estimated world population of 3.631 billion people.[90]
About
20 minutes after the first step, Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface
and became the second human to set foot on the Moon, and the duo began their
tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface.
Early on, they unveiled a plaque commemorating their flight, and also planted
the flag of the United States. The flag used on
this mission had a metal rod to hold it horizontal from its pole. Since the rod
did not fully extend, and the flag was tightly folded and packed during the
journey, the flag ended up with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a
breeze.[91]
Shortly after their flag planting, President Richard
Nixon spoke to them by a telephone call from his office. The
President spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about
thirty seconds.[92]
In
the entire Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five
images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. The mission was planned to the
minute, with the majority of photographic tasks to be performed by Armstrong
with a single Hasselblad camera.[93]
After
helping to set up the Early Apollo
Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a
walk to what is now known as East Crater, 65 yards (59 m) east of the LM,
the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. Armstrong's final
task was to remind Aldrin to leave a small package of memorial items to
deceased Soviet cosmonauts Yuri
Gagarin and Vladimir
Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronauts Gus
Grissom, Ed White and Roger
B. Chaffee.[94] The
time spent on EVA during Apollo 11 was about two and a half hours,
the shortest of any of the six Apollo lunar landing missions;[95]
each of the subsequent five landings were allotted gradually longer periods for
EVA activities—the crew of Apollo 17, by
comparison, spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface.[95]
In a
2010 interview, Armstrong explained that NASA limited his moonwalk to two hours
because they were unsure how the spacesuits would handle the extreme
temperature of the Moon.[96]
In
2013, Popular Science's photo gallery
included a photo that Armstrong took of Aldrin but his own image is visible on
Aldrin's helmet as one of the best astronaut
selfies.[97]
After
they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for
the liftoff from the lunar surface, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, in
their bulky spacesuits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent
engine; using part of a pen, they pushed the circuit breaker in to activate the
launch sequence.[98] The
lunar module then continued to its rendezvous and docked with Columbia,
the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and
splashed down in the Pacific ocean, to be picked up by the USS Hornet.[99]
After
being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up
any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew were feted across the United
States and around the world as part of a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour.
Armstrong then took part in Bob
Hope's 1969 USO
show, primarily to Vietnam.[100]
In
May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the
13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after
arriving in Leningrad from Poland, he
traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei
Kosygin. He was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev
Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center, which Armstrong described as "a bit Victorian in
nature".[101] At
the end of the day, he was surprised to view delayed video of the launch of Soyuz
9—it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was
taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and
her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board.[1
Armstrong underwent vascular bypass
surgery on August 7, 2012, to relieve blocked coronary arteries.[137]
Although he was reportedly recovering well,[138] he
died on August 25, in Cincinnati, Ohio, after complications resulting from the
cardiovascular procedure.[3]
After his death, Armstrong was described, in a statement released by the White House, as
"among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all
time".[139][140] The
statement further said that Armstrong had carried the aspirations of the United
States' citizens and that he had delivered "a moment of human achievement
that will never be forgotten."[141]
