the biography of neil armstrong

Neil Armstrong

Astronaut, military pilot and educator, Neil Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, by becoming the first man to walk on the moon.

(1930-2012)

Who Was Neil Armstrong?

Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. After serving in the Korean War and then finishing college, he joined the organization that would become NASA. Armstrong entered the astronaut program in 1962, and was command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII, in 1966. He was spacecraft commander for Apollo 11 , the first manned lunar mission, and became the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong died shortly after undergoing heart surgery in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2012.

Military Service

Armstrong developed a fascination with flight at an early age and earned his student pilot's license when he was 16. In 1947, Armstrong began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University on a U.S. Navy scholarship.

In 1949, as part of his scholarship, Armstrong trained as a pilot in the Navy. He began seeing active service in the Korean War two years later and went on to fly 78 combat missions during this military conflict.

After earning his release from active duty in 1952, Armstrong returned to college.

Joining NASA

A few years later, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). For this government agency, he worked in a number of different capacities, including serving as a test pilot and an engineer. He tested many high-speed aircraft, including the X-15, which could reach a top speed of 4,000 miles per hour.

Astronaut Program

In 1962, Armstrong entered the NASA astronaut program. He and his family moved to Houston, Texas, and Armstrong served as the command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII. He and fellow astronaut David Scott were launched into the earth's orbit on March 16, 1966. While in orbit, they were able to briefly dock their space capsule with the Gemini Agena target vehicle. This was the first time two vehicles had successfully docked in space. During this maneuver, however, they experienced some problems and had to cut their mission short. They landed in the Pacific Ocean nearly 11 hours after the mission's start and were later rescued by the U.S.S. Mason .

Moon Landing

At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong exited the Lunar Module. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he made his famous first step on the moon. For about two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin collected samples and conducted experiments. They also took photographs, including their own footprints.

Returning on July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 craft came down in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The crew and the craft were picked up by the U.S.S. Hornet , and the three astronauts were put into quarantine for three weeks.

Before long, the three Apollo 11 astronauts were given a warm welcome home. Crowds lined the streets of New York City to cheer on the famous heroes who were honored in a ticker-tape parade. Armstrong received numerous awards for his efforts, including the Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Later Contributions

Armstrong remained with NASA, serving as deputy associate administrator for aeronautics until 1971. After leaving NASA, he joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as a professor of aerospace engineering. Armstrong remained at the university for eight years. Staying active in his field, he served as the chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., from 1982 to 1992.

Helping out at a difficult time, Armstrong served as vice chairman of the Presidential Commission on the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986. The commission investigated the explosion of the Challenger on January 28, 1986, which took the lives of its crew, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe .

Despite being one of the most famous astronauts in history, Armstrong largely shied away from the public eye. In a rare interview for the news program 60 Minutes in 2005, he described the moon to interviewer Ed Bradley: "It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it."

Even in his final years, Armstrong remained committed to space exploration. The press-shy astronaut returned to the spotlight in 2010 to express his concerns over changes made to the U.S. space program. He testified in Congress against President Barack Obama 's decision to cancel the Constellation program, which included another mission to the moon. Obama also sought to encourage private companies to get involved in the space travel business and to move forward with more unmanned space missions.

Taking this new decision, Armstrong said, would cost the United States its leadership position in space exploration. "America is respected for its contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that would be in our best interests," he told Congress.

'First Man' Book and Movie

The iconic astronaut's authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong , was published in 2005. It was written by James R. Hansen, who conducted interviews with Armstrong, as well as his family, friends and associates.

The book was later adapted for a biopic, with First Man hitting theaters in 2018. Directed by Damien Chazelle , the film starred Ryan Gosling as Armstrong, with Claire Foy, Jason Clarke and Kyle Chandler in supporting roles.

Personal Life

Armstrong married Janet Shearon on January 28, 1956. The couple soon added to their family. Son Eric arrived in 1957, followed by daughter Karen in 1959. Sadly, Karen died of complications related to an inoperable brain tumor in January 1962. The following year, the Armstrongs welcomed their third child, son Mark.

Following his divorce from Janet in 1994, Armstrong married his second wife, Carol Held Knight.

Death & Controversy

Armstrong underwent a heart bypass operation at a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, in August 2012. Two weeks later, on August 25, 2012, the 82-year-old Armstrong died of complications from the operation.

Shortly after his death, his family released a statement: "For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

News of Armstrong's death quickly spread around the world. President Obama was among those offering tributes to the late space pioneer, declaring: "Neil was among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time."

Aldrin added: "I know I am joined by millions of others in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew. My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world and will forever be remembered as a landmark moment in human history."

In July 2019, shortly after celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, The New York Times reported on a previously unknown controversy surrounding the astronaut's death. According to The Times , after Armstrong checked into Mercy Health — Fairfield Hospital with symptoms of heart disease in August 2012, doctors made a questionable decision to immediately perform bypass surgery. Afterward, when the removal of temporary wires for a pacemaker resulted in internal bleeding, another questionable move was made to bring Armstrong to a catheterization lab instead of directly to an operating room.

The hospital eventually reached a $6 million settlement with Armstrong's surviving family, with the stipulation that the details surrounding the medical care and settlement remain private.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Neil Armstrong
• Birth Year: 1930
• Birth date: August 5, 1930
• Birth State: Ohio
• Birth City: Wapakoneta
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Astronaut, military pilot and educator, Neil Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, by becoming the first man to walk on the moon.
• Space Exploration
• Science and Medicine
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• University of Cincinnati
• Purdue University
• Death Year: 2012
• Death date: August 25, 2012
• Death State: Ohio
• Death City: Cincinnati
• Death Country: United States

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• It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it. [Describing the moon.]
• That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
• America is respected for its contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that would be in our best interests.
• The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon.
• A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It's something to hope for.
• There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief.
• I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul. We're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
• Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

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Neil Armstrong

By: History.com Editors

Published: September 26, 2023

On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, arguably the greatest technological achievement in human history. The moon landing made Armstrong famous, but the Navy pilot from Ohio was never comfortable with the spotlight. Right up until his death in 2012, Armstrong deflected praise for his role in the historic Apollo 11 mission , echoing his famous words as he first stepped onto the lunar surface: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Early Life and Korean War

Neil Armstrong always wanted to fly. He was born on August 5, 1930 near Wapakoneta, Ohio, less than 60 miles from the Wright brothers’ workshop in Dayton. In 1936, when he was six years old, young Neil rode in his first airplane, a “Tin Goose” Ford tri-motor passenger plane. He was hooked. At 16, Armstrong earned his student pilot’s license, even before he had a driver’s license.

In 1947, Armstrong attended Purdue University on a Naval scholarship, studying aeronautical engineering. As part of his scholarship, the Navy trained Armstrong as a fighter pilot in Florida. His college studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Korean War , where Armstrong flew 78 combat missions. His aircraft, the F-9F Panther jet, was one of the first jet fighters to launch from a carrier. 

NASA Test Pilot

After finishing college, Armstrong went to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. The mild-mannered kid from Ohio made his name as one of the most daring and skilled test pilots at NASA’s Flight Research Center (now the Armstrong Flight Research Center) at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

During seven years as a test pilot, Armstrong flew 200 different aircraft that pushed the limits of speed and altitude, including the legendary X-15. High over the California desert, Armstrong reached speeds of more than 4,000 mph and took the needle-nosed X-15 to the edge of space. Armstrong’s steady hand as a test pilot was instrumental to the success of NASA’s first Mercury astronauts . Soon he’d become one of them.

The Gemini Program

1962 was a year of joy and heartache for the Armstrong family. Neil was chosen for NASA’s astronaut training program in Houston, but he and his wife Janet also lost their second child, a two-year-old daughter named Karen, to an inoperable brain tumor.

Armstrong buried himself in his work preparing for the Gemini program, NASA’s next step toward reaching the moon. In 1966, Armstrong was chosen as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, the first time that NASA astronauts would attempt to connect two spacecraft in orbit, a difficult and dangerous maneuver known as “rendezvous and docking.”

In March, 1966, Armstrong and his copilot David Scott rocketed into orbit and successfully docked with the target spacecraft Agena, but things quickly went awry. A thruster on the Gemini 8 capsule malfunctioned and the two interlocked spacecraft began to veer off course. To avoid burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, Armstrong detached from the Agena, but the release of the Agena’s weight sent the Gemini capsule into an uncontrolled spin.

The G-forces created by the end-over-end spin were crushing and both astronauts were on the verge of losing consciousness when Armstrong activated a set of secondary thrusters and wrestled the Gemini capsule back under control. There’s no doubt that Armstrong’s test pilot nerves saved both astronauts’ lives.

The Moon Landing

Armstrong was selected for the Apollo program, the final push to the moon, but he almost never made it back to space. On May 6, 1968, Armstrong was in Houston conducting his 22nd test flight of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, an ungainly practice aircraft. Without warning, the LLRV veered out of control. Armstrong ejected and parachuted to safety, seconds before the LLRV crashed in a fiery explosion.

Undaunted, Armstrong continued his training and was chosen by NASA as the spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the mission to land the first men on the moon. His crewmates were Michael Collins , pilot of the command module that orbited the moon, and Buzz Aldrin , the lunar module pilot. Aldrin lobbied hard to be the first to step on the lunar surface, but the NASA brass chose Armstrong for his calm confidence and total lack of ego.

Those trademark nerves were on display on July 20, 1969 as Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module toward the surface of the moon. With fuel running dangerously low, Armstrong switched to manual control to steer the fragile spacecraft away from a field of “Volkswagen”-sized boulders and land the astronauts safely in the silty lunar soil.

As millions watched the live broadcast on their televisions, the shy pilot from Ohio descended the ladder of the Lunar Module and uttered his now-famous words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Because of the static-filled connection, the “a” was inaudible, but Armstrong insisted that he said it.

Life After the Moon Landing

Overnight, Armstrong became the most famous man alive. Four million spectators lined the streets of New York City to welcome home Armstrong and his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts in a ticker-tape parade. But Armstrong wasn’t in it for the fame and accolades. He quietly went back to a desk job at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., then earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.

Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971 and took a job as an engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati in his home state of Ohio. In 1986, he joined the Rogers Commission investigating the tragic Challenger shuttle explosion . Later, Armstrong served on a number of corporate boards in the aerospace industry and testified before Congress about the importance of maintaining a manned space program.  

In 2005, Armstrong consented to a rare television interview on 60 Minutes , in which he was asked directly if he was uncomfortable with the fame of being the first man on the moon. “No, I just don’t deserve it,” replied Armstrong, smiling. “Circumstance put me into that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.”

In 2012, Armstrong went in for heart bypass surgery and the 82-year-old astronaut died of complications.

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Biography of Neil Armstrong

The First Man to Walk on the Moon

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On July 20, 1969, one of the most momentous actions of all time took place not on Earth but on another world. Astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar lander Eagle, descended a ladder, and set foot on the surface of the Moon. Then, he spoke the most famous words of the 20th Century: "It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". His action was the culmination of years of research and development, success and failure, all sustained by both the U.S. and then-Soviet Union in the race to the Moon.

Fast Facts: Neil Alden Armstrong

• Birth : August 5, 1930
• Death : August 25, 2012
• Parents : Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engle
• Spouse : Married twice, once to Janet Armstrong, then to Carol Held Knight, 1994
• Children : Karen Armstrong, Eric Armstrong, Mark Armstrong
• Education : Purdue University, Masters' Degree from USC.
• Main Accomplishments : Navy test pilot, NASA astronaut for Gemini missions and Apollo 11, which he commanded. The first person to set foot on the Moon.

Neil Armstrong was born August 5, 1930, on a farm in Wapakoneta, Ohio. His parents, Stephen K. Armstrong and Viola Engel, raised him in a series of towns in Ohio while his father worked as a state auditor. As a youth, Neil held many jobs, but none more exciting than one at the local airport. After starting flying lessons at the age of 15, he got his pilot's license on his 16th birthday, before he had even earned a driver's license. After his high school years at Blume High School in Wapakonetica, Armstrong decided to pursue a degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University before committing to serving in the Navy. 

In 1949, Armstrong was called to Pensacola Naval Air Station before he could complete his degree. There he earned his wings at the age of 20, the youngest pilot in his squadron. He flew 78 combat mission in Korea, earning three medals, including the Korean Service Medal. Armstrong was sent home before the conclusion of the war and finished his bachelors degree in 1955.

Testing New Boundaries

After college, Armstrong decided to try his hand as a test pilot. He applied to National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) — the agency that preceded NASA — as a test pilot, but was turned down. So, he took a post at Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio. However, it was less than a year before Armstrong transferred to Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California to work at NACA's High Speed Flight Station.

During his tenure at Edwards Armstrong conducted test flights of more than 50 types of experimental aircraft, logging 2,450 hours of flight time. Among his accomplishments in these aircraft, Armstrong was able to achieve speeds of Mach 5.74 (4,000 mph or 6,615 km/h) and an altitude of 63,198 meters (207,500 feet), but in the X-15 aircraft.

Armstrong had a technical efficiency in his flying that was the envy of most of his colleagues. However, he was criticized by some of the non-engineering pilots, including Chuck Yeager and Pete Knight, who observed that his technique was "too mechanical". They argued that flying was, at least in part, feel, that it was something that didn't come naturally to the engineers. This sometimes got them into trouble.

While Armstrong was a comparatively successful test pilot, he was involved in several aerial incidents that didn't work out so well. One of the most famous occurred when he was sent in an F-104 to investigate Delamar Lake as a potential emergency landing site. After an unsuccessful landing damaged the radio and hydraulic system, Armstrong headed toward Nellis Air Force Base. When he tried to land, the tail hook of the plane lowered due to the damaged hydraulic system and caught the arresting wire on the airfield. The plane slid out of control down the runway, dragging the anchor chain along with it.

The problems didn't end there. Pilot Milt Thompson was dispatched in an F-104B to retrieve Armstrong. However, Milt had never flown that aircraft and ended up blowing one of the tires during a hard landing. The runway was then closed for the second time that day to clear the landing path of debris. A third aircraft was sent to Nellis, piloted by Bill Dana. But Bill almost landed his T-33 Shooting Star long, prompting Nellis to send the pilots back to Edwards using ground transportation.

Crossing Into Space

In 1957, Armstrong was selected for the "Man In Space Soonest" (MISS) program. Then in September 1963, he was selected as the first American civilian to fly in space. 

Three years later, Armstrong was the command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, which launched March 16. Armstrong and his crew performed the first-ever docking with another spacecraft, an unmanned Agena target vehicle. After 6.5 hours in orbit they were able to dock with the craft, but due to complications, they were unable to complete what would have been the third-ever "extra-vehicular activity", now referred to as a spacewalk.

Armstrong also served as the CAPCOM, who is typically the only person who to communicate directly with the astronauts during missions to space. He did this for the Gemini 11 mission. However, it was not until the Apollo program began that Armstrong again ventured into space.

The Apollo Program

Armstrong was commander of the backup crew of the Apollo 8 mission, though he had been originally scheduled to back-up the Apollo 9 mission. (Had he remained as the   backup commander, he would have been slated to command Apollo 12 , not  Apollo 11 .)

Initially, Buzz Aldrin , the Lunar Module Pilot, was to be the first to set foot on the Moon. However, because of the positions of the astronauts in the module, it would require Aldrin to physically crawl over Armstrong to reach the hatch. As such, it was decided that it would be easier for Armstrong to exit the module first upon landing.

Apollo 11 touched down on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969, at which point Armstrong declared, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Apparently, Armstrong had only seconds of fuel left before the thrusters would cut out. If that had happened, the lander would have plummeted to the surface. That didn't happen, much to everyone's relief. Armstrong and Aldrin exchanged congratulations before quickly preparing the lander to launch off the surface in case of an emergency.

Humanity's Greatest Achievement

On July 20, 1969, Armstrong made his way down the ladder from the Lunar Lander and, upon reaching the bottom declared "I'm going to step off the LEM now." As his left boot made contact with the surface he then spoke the words that defined a generation, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

About 15 minutes after exiting the module, Aldrin joined him on the surface and they began investigating the lunar surface. They planted the American flag, collected rock samples, took images and video, and transmitted their impressions back to Earth.

The final task carried out by Armstrong was to leave behind a package of memorial items in remembrance of deceased Soviet cosmonauts  Yuri Gagarin  and Vladimir Komarov, and   Apollo 1  astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. All told, Armstrong and Aldrin spent 2.5 hours on the lunar surface, paving the way for other Apollo missions.

The astronauts then returned to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed upon civilians, as well as a host of other medals from NASA and other countries.

Life After Space

After his Moon trip, Neil Armstrong completed a master's degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California and worked as an administrator with NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He next turned his attention to education and accepted a teaching position at the University of Cincinnati with the Department of Aerospace Engineering. He held this appointment until 1979. Armstrong also served on two investigation panels. The first was after the  Apollo 13  incident, while the second came after the  Challenger explosion .

Armstrong lived much of his life after NASA life outside the public eye, and worked in private industry and consulted for NASA until his retirement. He made occasional public appearances until shortly before his death on August 25, 2012. His ashes were buried at sea in the Atlantic Ocean the following month.  His words and deeds live on in the annals of space exploration, and he was widely admired by space explorers and space enthusiasts around the world.

• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Neil Armstrong.” Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Aug. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Neil-Armstrong.

Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon . Time-Life, 1999.

Dunbar, Brian. “Biography of Neil Armstrong.” NASA , NASA, 10 Mar. 2015, www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/neilabio.html.

Wilford, John Noble. “Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Dies at 82.” The New York Times , The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/science/space/neil-armstrong-dies-first-man-on-moon.html.

Edited by Carolyn Collins Petersen.

• History of the Apollo 11 Mission, "One Giant Leap for Mankind"
• First Man on the Moon
• The Space Race of the 1960s
• Neil Armstrong Quotes
• Space First: From Space Dogs to a Tesla
• Remembering NASA Astronaut Gus Grissom
• The Evolution of the Space Suit
• Apollo 14 Mission: Return to the Moon after Apollo 13
• Did Politics Fuel the Space Race?
• Michael Collins, Astronaut Who Piloted Apollo 11's Command Module
• History of the Lunar Rover
• The History of Transportation
• The Future of Human Space Exploration
• The History and Legacy of Project Mercury
• Should We Build a Moon Base?
• George Carruthers and the Spectrograph

Biography Online

Neil Armstrong Biography

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

– Neil Armstrong (21 July 1969)

Early life Neil Armstrong

Armstrong was born 5 August 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, US. He attended Blue High School and took flying lessons while still a student; by the time he was 16, he had gained his flight certificate. Aged 17, he studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University, turning down a chance to study at MIT. His studies were partly financed by the US Navy and, after his first two years, he was called up to the Navy for flight training, where he qualified to be a naval aviator.

In 1951, he was sent to the Korean War where he took part in active service, including an emergency ejection after his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. He flew 78 missions during the Korean War before returning to Purdue to finish his degree.

In 1955, he graduated with a B.A. in aeronautical engineering. After graduation, he applied to be a test pilot for NACA – the High-Speed Flight Station, at Edwards Air Force Base. This involved testing new high-speed aircraft for the US military. This included pioneering new rocket planes, such as the Bell X-1B and North American X-14.

Neil Armstrong and the X 15

As a test pilot, Armstrong became known for his natural flying ability and willingness to take risks – stretching the boundaries of what was possible. He was also one of the most technically capable engineers.

In 1958, he was selected for the US Air Force’s Man in Space Soonest programme. Later, in 1962, he was later selected for the Apollo program – which aimed to put a man in space and land on the moon. In J.F. Kennedy’s address to Congress of 25 May 1961, he had put landing on the moon as a primary goal for America.

“Landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth – by the end of the 1960s.”

The space project was also infused with Cold War symbolism with an unofficial space race taking place with America’s ideological enemy – the Soviet Union. After the Soviets became the first to put a man in space, there was even greater pressure for America to win the prize of putting a man on the moon. On the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Mission, Armstrong said that the moon race was a helpful diversion from Cold War tensions.

“I’ll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion.” (2009)

In the early 1960s, Armstrong took part in Project Gemini – flying spacecraft in long-duration space-flight. This gave NASA and Armstrong valuable experience for the more ambitious targets of the Apollo missions.

Apollo 11 Mission

In December 1968, Armstrong was chosen to be the commander for Apollo 11, which would be the first planned mission to dock and land on the moon. Armstrong was chosen to be the first person who would have the distinction of walking on the moon. Some suggest NASA chose Armstrong because he didn’t have a large ego.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

― Neil Armstrong

His fellow crew members were Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.

Crew of Apollo 11

The Apollo 11 launch was a success, and after a tricky descent, Armstrong manually landed the lunar module on 20 July 1969. Armstrong said later that it was the lunar landing, which was the trickiest part of the trip.

“The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight.”

After checking fuel and other checklists, Armstrong got ready to leave the craft and walk on the moon. He left the Apollo Lunar module and touched the moon surface at 2.56 UTC 21 July 1969. On taking the first steps on the moon, he said the famous words:

Armstrong later said he never planned the words in advance; one reason was that they were never certain of success. He felt there was only a 50% chance of making a successful moon landing. He later said:

“I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful”

The words and pictures were broadcast on radio and made headlines across the world. In a telephone interview with US President Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong spoke of the mission

It’s a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interests and the curiosity and with the vision for the future. It’s an honor for us to be able to participate here today.

On their return to the US, they were fêted as heroes and embarked on tours of the US and the world. This included a vista to the Soviet Union in May 1970.

When asked about the moon project, Armstrong was always proud of his contribution. He said

“I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul … we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”

Apollo mission press conference (1969)

After the Apollo flight, Armstrong retired from space missions and accepted a teaching position at the University of Cincinnati. He also served as a spokesperson for several businesses, including advertising campaigns for US car producer Chrysler. Armstrong also served on crash investigation commissions which looked at aircraft disasters, such as Challenger.

Armstrong married his first wife Janet Jearon in 1956; they had three children. They divorced after 38 years of marriage. In 1994, he remarried Carol Knight.

Armstrong remained without political affiliation, though he declared himself in favour of state rights, and against the US acting as the world’s policeman. He didn’t have a religious affiliation but described himself as a deist.

Many friends speak highly of Armstrong’s character saying he had a natural humility and was careful to avoid boosting of his unique role. John Glenn, the first American, to orbit the Earth said of Armstrong.

“He was a humble person, and that’s the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well as before.”

Armstrong died on 25 August 2012, aged 82 from coronary complications.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Neil Armstrong”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 3rd February 2015. Last updated 6 November 2019.

Neil Armstrong – A Life of Flight

Neil Armstrong – A Life of Flight at Amazon

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Nile Armstrong was a brave man, so was Buzz Aldrin

• December 18, 2018 5:23 PM

Niel armstrong was a really brave man

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• By timothy dobson

Neil Armstrong made history as the first human to walk on the Moon, travelling to there as the commander of Apollo 11. 

About Neil Armstrong

With 25 layers of protective materials, weighing in at 81 pounds, the spacesuits worn by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were a feat of engineering and crucial for protecting the astronauts and enabling them to perform their duties on the Moon. During the summer of 2015, the National Air and Space Museum embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to help conserve, digitize, and display Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit. Take a closer look at the suit, and how we conserved it.

Armstrong and Apollo 11 in the Collection

Apollo 11 was not Armstrong's first time in space. He previously flew on Gemini VIII in 1965, where he and astronaut David Scott were the first people to dock two vehicles in space successfully.

The successful docking was quickly followed by the first life-threatening, in-flight emergency in the short history of the U.S. human spaceflight program. Gemini VIII, joined to its Agena target vehicle, began spinning and gyrating; when the astronauts undocked, Gemini’s rotation accelerated to the point where the crew could black out and die. Together with his crew mates, Armstrong's cool handling of the situation saved their lives.

About the first in-flight emergency

The Gemini VIII spacecraft, shown here, was used to carry out the first docking of two spacecraft in history. The spacecraft was an enlarged, redesigned version of the one-person spacecraft used during the Mercury program. It had two major units. The reentry module held the crew cabin and heat shield. Behind it was the adapter, which consisted of two sections. The equipment section carried fuel, oxygen, and power supplies. The retrograde section carried retrorockets that slowed the spacecraft to make it fall out of orbit. Using small rockets on the adapter, the astronauts could not only change their orientation in space, but also their orbital path. 

Prior to his time as an astronaut, Armstrong was a student pilot, a Navy pilot, an aeronautical engineer, and eventually a test pilot for NASA.

His love of flight and engineering drew him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) where he was accepted as an experimental test pilot soon after his graduation. While at the NACA, which was the predecessor to NASA, Armstrong flew a wide range of different aircraft including all of the Century series fighters for which he was the project pilot. All told, Armstrong flew more than 200 different types of aircraft in his storied career. Noted for his engineering excellence and technical capability as a pilot, Armstrong became one of only 12 pilots to fly the ultimate experimental aircraft – the North American X-15. 

Armstrong left NASA in 1971 to become a professor of aerospace engineering, dedicating the rest of his life to education. He passed away at age 82 in August 2012. 

Remembering Neil Armstrong

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Neil Armstrong: First man on the moon

A brief biography of Neil Armstrong.

Early career and NASA work

Apollo 11 and the first moonwalk, after apollo 11, and armstrong's death, armstrong's legacy, additional resources, bibliography.

Neil Armstrong was a NASA astronaut and aeronautical engineer. He famously became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969 during Apollo 11 . Armstrong also flew on NASA's Gemini 8 mission in 1966. 

He retired from NASA in 1971 and remained active in the aerospace community, although he chose to keep mostly out of the public spotlight. Armstrong died Aug. 25, 2012, at age 82.

Armstrong was famously reticent about his accomplishments, preferring to focus on the team that helped him get to the moon rather than his own first steps. "I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work," Armstrong said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program in 2005. 

In another interview, when asked what it feels like to have his footprints remain on the moon's surface for thousands of years, Armstrong said, "I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up," The Independent reported.

Related: Apollo landers, Neil Armstrong’s bootprint and other human artifacts on moon officially protected by new US law

Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on Aug. 5, 1930, to Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. 

Neil was a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952 and served in the Korean War. He earned his bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University in 1955. (Many years later, after he became world-famous, he also received a master of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.) 

Armstrong became a test pilot for NASA (then known as NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and flew the X-15, a rocket-powered, missile-shaped aircraft that tested the limits of high-altitude flight. During his long career as a pilot, Armstrong flew more than 200 different aircraft, from jets to gliders and even helicopters.

In 1962, Armstrong was selected to be part of NASA's second group of astronauts, who flew on the two-seat Gemini missions to test out space technology, and the three-seat Apollo missions that ultimately took 12 people to the surface of the moon. Armstrong's first flight was as command pilot of the Gemini 8 mission in March 1966 — the sixth crewed mission of that series. 

Armstrong and pilot David Scott completed the first orbital docking of two spacecraft, joining their Gemini 8 spacecraft to an uncrewed Agena target vehicle. However, the two-man crew experienced a serious problem when a thruster on the Gemini 8 spacecraft became stuck open. With the astronauts whipping around faster than one revolution per second, Armstrong managed to gain control again by using the re-entry system thrusters. The event was the first serious emergency in space and although the mission ultimately ended safely, the spacecraft was forced to splash down early because the re-entry system was already expended.

Armstrong also narrowly avoided a nasty accident in May 1968, this time within Earth's atmosphere , while flying the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle — a machine that could fly somewhat like a lunar module and simulate landings on the moon. Fuel for the attitude thrusters ran out and Armstrong was forced to eject just seconds before the vehicle crashed, NASA reported . Armstrong escaped unharmed.

The Apollo 11 crew members were announced to the public in January 1969. NASA's chief of the Astronaut Office, Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton, chose an all-veteran team of Neil Armstrong (Gemini 8), Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Gemini 12) and Michael Collins (Gemini 10), with Armstrong selected to command the mission. His responsibilities included landing on the moon alongside Aldrin, the pilot of the lunar module Eagle. Collins would remain in lunar orbit aboard the command module Columbia. (Collins was originally supposed to be backup pilot for Apollo 11, but his spot in the flight sequence was moved after required surgery on his back forced him off the prime crew for Apollo 8.)

As the lander approached the moon, Armstrong took over the controls when he saw that the computer was guiding them to a boulder-filled landing zone. At 4:14 p.m. EDT (2014 GMT), Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, with only 25 seconds of fuel left. Armstrong radioed, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Capsule communicator and astronaut Charles Duke responded from Earth: "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."

The schedule called for the astronauts to sleep before the first moonwalk, but they elected to go outside early because they felt they would not be able to sleep. In view of a black-and-white television camera transmitting his movements live to Earth, Armstrong descended Eagle's lander and touched his left foot upon the surface at 10:56 p.m. EDT July 20 (0256 GMT July 21). His first words were "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." (The "a" was lost to radio static, but later analysis of the sound wave showed that Armstrong did say it.)

Armstrong and Aldrin together explored the surface during a moonwalk that lasted 2 hours and 36 minutes. They collected 48.5 pounds (22 kilograms) of material from the surface — including 50 moon rocks — as well as deploying experiments, planting the U.S. flag and taking a moment to speak with the U.S. president at the time, Richard Nixon. 

The Eagle's crew lifted off safely from the moon on July 21, docked with Columbia, and voyaged back to Earth for a successful ocean landing on July 24. The astronauts went into quarantine to mitigate the (unlikely) risk that they were carrying some sort of moon germs back with them, and then embarked on a world tour to celebrate the mission.

After his time as an astronaut, Armstrong was deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA headquarters . He resigned from NASA in 1971. From 1971 to 1979, he was a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Then from 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc. in Charlottesville, Virginia. Armstrong also participated in the Rogers Commission, which was a presidential commission tasked to look at the causes and events of the fatal Challenger shuttle explosion of Jan. 28, 1986, that killed seven astronauts. 

Armstrong chose to mostly stay out of the spotlight after leaving NASA, although he did reappear periodically for interviews or for anniversary events concerning Apollo 11. Although his public statements were few, he followed spaceflight news and occasionally made public comments on what was happening. He remained a vocal supporter of suborbital spaceflight. On the other hand, the former Apollo astronaut was publicly critical of plans to shift crewed spaceflight from NASA to private spacecraft.

On Aug. 7, 2012 — two days after Armstrong turned 82 years old — the famed moonwalker underwent coronary bypass surgery. Complications from the surgery resulted in his death on Aug. 25. 

"Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend," his family wrote on the website neilarmstronginfo.com. "For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request," they added. "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

Tributes poured in from many public figures, including President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, then-NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Apollo 11 crewmates Aldrin and Collins, and various space representatives in the public, private and nonprofit spheres. 

"Neil was among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time," Obama's statement read . "When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible."

A private memorial service for Armstrong was held Aug. 31, 2012, at the Camargo Club in Cincinnati. Two weeks later, a publicly televised memorial service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. 

Armstrong was buried at sea Sept. 14, 2012, in a ceremony aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea. Armstrong's family was on board when the ship left port in Mayport, Florida, and they released his ashes somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Obama ordered flags around the United States to fly at half-staff on the day of the funeral.

In 2015, the Smithsonian Institution revealed that Armstrong had kept aside a cloth bag full of small parts from the lunar module Eagle, which lay undiscovered for decades until his widow, Carol, found it. While Armstrong made no mention of this bag in decades of interviews, the bag was discussed a few times during the mission. 

It is unknown how Armstrong ultimately gained possession of the bag, but it was common during the Apollo years for astronauts to retain souvenirs of their flights. (A month after Armstrong's death, Obama made legal a bill to allow Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts to retain legal title to these mementos.) Former "Mythbusters" host Adam Savage subsequently created a carry bag based on the design of Armstrong's "purse"; the design was actually used in several Apollo missions before and after Apollo 11. 

On Jul. 21, 2009, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin attended the U.S House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology tribute to the Apollo 11 Astronauts at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill. During the ceremony, the committee presented the astronauts with a copy of House Resolution 607 honoring their achievements and announced the passage of legislation awarding them and John Glenn the Congressional Gold Medal. 

In a 2013 BBC documentary, Armstrong's brother, Dean, said that he knew of the famous first words on the moon several months before Apollo 11 touched down. Dean reported that Armstrong passed him a handwritten note as the brothers played a late-night game of Risk, according to British newspaper the Telegraph. However, Dean's remarks contradicted many statements by Armstrong himself, who said that the words didn't come to him until he arrived on the moon. The other Apollo 11 astronauts have also backed up Armstrong's assertions.

In 2017, a rare gold lunar model was stolen from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta. "Entry to the museum was discovered and taken was a solid gold replica of the 1969 Lunar Excursion Module that landed on the moon," Russel Hunlock, Wapakoneta police chief, said in a release. "The piece is very rare as it was presented to Neil Armstrong in Paris, France, shortly after the moon landing." 

On Oct. 12, 2018, Universal Pictures released a Neil Armstrong biography based on James R. Hansen's book "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong." The movie starred Ryan Gosling as Armstrong. The movie was embroiled in political controversy because the filmmakers decided not to include a scene where Armstrong plants an American flag on the moon's surface, despite the fact that Armstrong did so in reality. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, tweeted, "This is total lunacy. And a disservice at a time when our people need reminders of what we can achieve when we work together." 

At the Venice Film Festival Gosling defended the filmmaker's choice, reported The Telegraph , saying, "I think [the moon landing] was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that's how we chose to view it." 

On Aug. 11, 2021, NASA dedicated the Ohio test facility to Neil Armstrong . Armstrong had graciously declined the honor when he was originally asked, but on Wednesday (Aug. 11), nine years after Armstrong died and a week after what would have been his 91st birthday, a group of NASA officials and members of Congress gathered at a small dedication ceremony in Sandusky, Ohio. NASA’s Plum Brook Station is now known as The Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility. 

You can explore 50 Neil Armstrong facts with this article from  Facts.net  or read about Armstrong's life and dreams of space travel  in this book  by James R. Hansen. Discover more about Armstrong in  this informative article  published by the Air and Space Museum.

• Sylvia Doughty Fries “ NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo ”, The NASA History Series. 
• Hansen, James R. “ First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong ”. Simon and Schuster, 2012. 

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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Culture History

Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) was an American astronaut and the first person to set foot on the Moon. He achieved this historic feat on July 20, 1969, as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. Armstrong’s famous words upon stepping onto the lunar surface were, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Apart from his groundbreaking contribution to space exploration, Armstrong also had a distinguished career as a test pilot and aeronautical engineer.

Growing up in Wapakoneta, Armstrong developed an early fascination with flight and the skies. His interest in aviation was sparked by experiences like taking a ride in a Ford Trimotor airplane at the age of six. His family’s move to nearby Upper Sandusky allowed him to explore his passion further, as the new location was closer to an airstrip.

After graduating from Blume High School in Wapakoneta, Armstrong enrolled at Purdue University to pursue a degree in aeronautical engineering. His education was briefly interrupted by the Korean War when he served as a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952. Armstrong flew 78 combat missions during the war, earning three Air Medals for his bravery and skill.

Upon completing his service, Armstrong returned to Purdue and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1955. Subsequently, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA, as a research pilot at the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. Armstrong’s work at NACA included testing advanced aircraft and contributing to the development of high-speed flight.

In 1962, Armstrong joined NASA’s astronaut program. His selection as an astronaut marked the beginning of a new chapter in his life. The Mercury and Gemini programs provided valuable experience for Armstrong as he participated in various missions, refining his skills as a pilot and astronaut. His calm demeanor and exceptional piloting abilities earned him the respect of his colleagues and superiors.

The pivotal moment in Armstrong’s career came with the Apollo program, NASA’s ambitious effort to land humans on the Moon. He was initially assigned as the backup commander for Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon. However, a twist of fate led to Armstrong being selected as the commander of Apollo 11, the historic mission that aimed to achieve the first crewed lunar landing.

On July 16, 1969, Armstrong, along with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center aboard the Saturn V rocket. The eyes of the world were fixed on Apollo 11 as it embarked on the journey that would define an era. Four days later, the lunar module, named Eagle, separated from the command module, and Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the lunar surface.

The momentous words “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” echoed across the world as Armstrong set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969. The successful landing of Apollo 11 fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s vision of putting a man on the Moon before the end of the decade and solidified Armstrong’s place in history. The achievement was a culmination of years of innovation, dedication, and perseverance by countless individuals, with Armstrong as the embodiment of human exploration.

After returning from the Moon, Armstrong and his fellow astronauts were celebrated as heroes. They embarked on a world tour, received numerous accolades, and became symbols of American ingenuity and achievement. However, Armstrong, known for his modesty and reluctance to be in the spotlight, remained grounded despite the adulation.

Following his historic mission, Armstrong took on various roles within NASA, contributing to the space program’s planning and management. In 1971, he resigned from NASA to become a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Armstrong’s transition to academia allowed him to share his knowledge and experiences with the next generation of aerospace engineers.

In the years that followed, Armstrong maintained his connection to space exploration. He served on various advisory committees and witnessed the evolution of the Space Shuttle program. Despite his contributions to space exploration, Armstrong was known for his humility and preferred a quiet life away from the public eye.

Neil Armstrong passed away on August 25, 2012, at the age of 82. His legacy extends far beyond his historic steps on the Moon. Armstrong’s contributions to space exploration, his dedication to education, and his role as a symbol of human achievement continue to inspire generations. The Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, stands as a tribute to his life and accomplishments, preserving the legacy of a man who dared to dream, explore, and reach for the stars.

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Who was neil armstrong (grades k-4), nasa stem team, what was neil armstrong’s life like growing up, what did neil armstrong do before he became an astronaut, what did neil armstrong do as an astronaut, what happened on the apollo 11 mission, what did neil armstrong do after apollo 11, an american hero and explorer.

This article is for students grades K-4.

Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon. He was an astronaut. He flew on two space missions. One was Apollo 11. That mission landed on the moon. He was also an engineer, a pilot and a college professor.

Neil Armstrong was born on Aug. 5, 1930. He was born in Ohio. He had a brother and a sister. He was in the Boy Scouts of America. Armstrong flew in an airplane when he was 6. That flight made him love airplanes. He attended Blume High School in Ohio.

Armstrong went to college at Purdue University. While he was in college, he left to serve in the U.S. Navy. He flew planes during the Korean War. Then he came back to college and finished the degree he had started. He later earned a master’s degree too.

Before he was an astronaut, Armstrong worked for a group that studied airplanes. That group later became part of NASA. He flew several planes for them. He also helped design planes. One of the aircraft he flew was the X-15 rocket plane. This plane flew very high and very fast. It set records.

Armstrong became an astronaut in 1962. He was in the second group of astronauts ever chosen. He was the commander of Gemini 8 in 1966. He flew on that mission with David Scott. They were the first astronauts to dock, or connect, two vehicles in space.

Armstrong’s second flight was Apollo 11 in 1969. He was the mission commander. He flew with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon in a lander named “Eagle.” They were the first people to land on the moon. Collins did not land. He circled the moon in the Apollo capsule. After they landed, Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. Armstrong took the first step on the moon. He said, “That’s one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.”

Armstrong and Aldrin spent more than two hours outside their spacecraft on the moon. They studied the surface. They collected rocks. After almost a day, they blasted off. They docked with Collins in orbit around the moon. All three then flew back to Earth.  

Neil Armstrong retired from NASA after Apollo 11. In 1971, Armstrong became a college professor. He taught until 1979. Later, he became a businessman. He stayed active in groups that studied space and aeronautics.

Neil Armstrong died on August 25, 2012. He was 82.

More About Neil Armstrong: What Was the Apollo Program ? What Was the Gemini Program ?

Read Who Was Neil Armstrong? (Grades 5-8)

Neil Armstrong: A Man Out of Time

“ All in all for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.” ​Neil Armstrong

T oday marks the 40 th anniversary of our first steps beyond the Earth. For almost anyone alive on July 20, 1969, man’s first words from the moon and first steps on the moon are flashbulb events. We remember clearly—as if it were moments ago—where we were when we heard, “ Tranquility Base , the Eagle has landed,” and later that day, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” The phrases are etched, immortalized in our minds. 

Over time, memory of that event is interspersed with others in a kind of  NASA  jumble—words and images that are interconnected yet disassociated: Sputnik; Yuri Gagarin; Alan Shepard ; John Glenn; the Apollo fire; “Houston, we have a problem”; “ Challenger  go at throttle up”; the y-shaped cloud; and the image of a faceless, shiny space helmet reflecting the surface of the moon. 

Over the decades, beginning with the Apollo era but transcending it in duration and scientific data, unmanned robotic vehicles—the Pioneer , Voyager , Galileo and Magellan  probes, as well as Martian landers Viking , Pathfinder and Phoenix , have brought us profound insights into our solar neighborhood. But without a human presence on board, the dramatic scientific and technical accomplishments of those missions are often forgotten. For many, they never even register. Without the emotional connection to a fellow human “out there,” these other great moments in human exploration have low mental “stickiness.” 

But the greater human endeavor illustrated by the space program—the need to search and understand that is common to all humankind—is always worth thinking about. We continue to ask, as King David asked in the Psalms, what is the connection between ourselves and the universe: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3–4, English Standard Version). 

Understanding the physical details of the moon and the stars is one step toward an answer to the bigger questions; but more insight comes from understanding man. Looking at the life of the man who made that first small step on the moon’s surface provides a window into mankind —who we all  are and why anyone should care.

Midwest Beginnings 

Neil Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, in his grandparents’ Ohio farmhouse. In an echo of the biblical story of Hannah and her firstborn son Samuel, when Neil’s mother Viola found out she was pregnant, she fell on her knees and “thanked God with all [her] heart.” Promising to teach the child, records biographer James R. Hansen, “the very best way I knew how” and “to give him back to God to use him as He saw fit,” she prayed that the baby would “grow up to be a good and useful person.” 

Viola says Neil was “a serene and untroubled baby,” and Hansen notes that “family photos captured the boy’s tendency towards shyness”—not what one expects from a boy whose name means Champion  in Gaelic, the language of their family ancestry. Certainly the fact that the family moved 16 times during the first 14 years of Neil’s life may have contributed to his reticence.

Like his mother, Neil was a voracious reader with an understanding well beyond his years. He was consumed with learning. “The way mother treated him fostered a high level of self-confidence,” notes his sister, June. His brother Dean adds that Neil didn’t display anger and tended to avoid confrontation, but “I don’t think he ‘scared’ that much.” 

For Neil, rural Ohio represented comfort, security, privacy and sane values. “Mother thrived on goodness,” Neil said. “She always wanted us to be good.” A high school friend remembers Neil as a “person of few words” who “thought before he spoke.” These character traits and his quiet confidence would serve him well as he moved from green Ohio to the lunar plains of Tranquility Base. But first he had to make the move from the ground up to the air.

The Aviator 

Hansen writes of this transitional time in Armstrong’s life. “In the quiet congenial world of the series of midwestern towns that amounted to the truest Tranquility Base he would ever know . . . he prepared to meet the world. He would dare risking his peace and comfort on something he discovered there. That ‘something’ was flying.” Skipping Sunday school without his mother’s knowledge, Neil took his first plane ride with his father when he was 6 years old. This spurred an interest in model airplanes that blossomed into career plans. “While I was still in elementary school my intention was to be or—hope was to be—an aircraft designer,” he told Hansen. “I later went into piloting, because I thought a good designer ought to know operational aspects of an airplane.” 

Leaving model airplanes behind, he began saving for flying lessons. At only 40 cents per hour, Neil had to work 22 1/2 hours to pay for a single lesson. Like a kid doing odd jobs in a bowling alley to get free games, he hung around Wapakoneta Airfield and over time learned to work on airplane engines. Viola told Hansen, “For everything he did they gave him flying lessons.” 

Armstrong earned his pilot’s license before he got his automobile driver’s license. His father later reported that Neil “never had a girl [and he] didn’t need a car. All he had to do was get out to that airport.”

Close Call 

In 1947 Armstrong attended  Purdue University  because of its superior aeronautical engineering program. However, the family lacked the funds to pay for a four-year education, so he attended Purdue by enlisting in the Navy and taking advantage of the government’s education program. The program required three years of active service between the sophomore and junior years of college. In 1949 he was called to active duty. 

A year later the Korean War broke out. In all, Armstrong flew 78 missions, but the most harrowing was in September 1951. In combat over North Korea, his time almost ran out. Richard P. Hallion, historian of military aviation, gives an account of the incident: 

“ As the Essex Panther strafed a column of trucks near Wonsan, flack knocked the jet into a spinning dive. In its cockpit, the young fighter pilot instinctively regained control over the hurtling plane, recovering into level flight a mere twenty feet off the ground. The Panther immediately collided with a telephone pole, clipping three feet from its right wing. Again the pilot managed to regain control, and he staggered back up to 14,000 feet, reaching friendly territory before ejecting safely. Two days later, Ensign Armstrong returned to VF-51.”

Unfortunately this is unnecessarily dramatized, according to Hansen, an “invention of Naval Aviation News .” The accurate story appears to be that Armstrong hit a cable intended as a booby-trap during a bombing run, lost about 6-feet of one wing, and bailed out over the Sea of Japan. Wind currents carried him inland where he landed in a rice paddy and was met, amazingly, by a former flight-school roommate in a jeep. 

Returning to Purdue University in 1952, Armstrong met Janet Shearon. They would marry four years later and have three children: Rick, Karen (“Muffie”) and Mark. While at Purdue, he watched with the world as Navy test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier flying an experimental aircraft. For Armstrong, this era of flight dawned bittersweet, as it seemed aviation’s best days had passed him by. “All in all for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late,” he wrote. “I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.”

But over the next few years aviation would turn to aerospace. During Armstrong’s final years at Purdue in the Aeronautical Engineering Program, he witnessed the development of hypersonic wind tunnels capable of Mach 5 speeds, the revolutionary new designs of V-2 missiles, surface-to-air antiballistic missile systems, and pressurized flight suits for high-altitude flying. 

A Death in the Family 

In 1954 Armstrong became a civilian experimental research pilot with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Cleveland, Ohio. Later relocating to Edwards Air force Base in California, he began working with NASA and flew the X-15 to 207,000 feet. “[He] was always happier when he was flying—he was not a desk job person,” Janet later told Hansen. Thanks to the movie The Right Stuff , most people believe, inaccurately, that Chuck Yeager was the first man to fly an airplane to the edge of space. In fact, it was Armstrong and his fellow X-15 test pilots who can claim that honor. 

Tragedy struck when the Armstrongs’ 2-year-old daughter Karen Anne (“Muffie”) died of a malignant brain tumor on their sixth wedding anniversary. Emotionally stoic and test-pilot hardened, Armstrong did not allow his emotions to overcome him, apparently using work as a crutch to fill in the emotional void and push the pain to arm’s length. “I thought his heart would break,” his sister June relates. “That’s when he started into the space program.” And several months later in 1962, Armstrong submitted his name for astronaut selection. He officially joined the astronaut ranks on September 17, 1962, as a member of the second group following the initial Mercury 7 in 1959. (His fellow Apollo 11  crew mates, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins, were members of the third group selected in October 1963.)

Thirty Seconds 

In some fashion Armstrong packaged away his loss as he continued the astronaut training program. Prior to the moon landing, he served as Gemini VIII command pilot for a half-day mission in March 1966. That flight was aborted when a malfunctioning thruster spun the capsule up to a dizzying 500 rpm. 

As commander for Apollo 11 , Armstrong had the responsibility for landing the Lunar Module (LEM). Guided by both computer data and directions from pilot Aldrin to his right, Armstrong maneuvered the craft across an unexpected rock-strewn landscape to what could have been anything but a successful landing. The LEM moves in a feet-first, windows-up configuration; thus, so do the astronauts. It is only in the last few moments that the craft pitches forward so the commander can see the terrain ahead. Without the human element, the craft’s autopilot would likely have dismembered the spindly four-legged machine among the boulders, if it could have landed at all. 

Under Armstrong’s guidance, the LEM continued down. He and Aldrin flew on through general computer overload warnings while seeking a clear spot to put down. Armstrong later said that because “nothing was jiggering or acting erratic” from his pilot’s point of view, his “inclination was just to keep going ahead as long as everything looked like it was fine.” Then NASA ground controllers called up another distraction. “Thirty seconds” is the phrase heard; many believe this to be Aldrin noting the estimated time until touchdown. Actually, it was the time left before their fuel ran out. 

When the call finally came down from Armstrong, “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed,” the reply—“Thanks . . . you got us breathing again”—takes on its fuller context. No one really cared that they had missed hitting the predetermined landing site exactly. “Anyway,” Armstrong said later, “it wasn’t a big deal as to exactly where we were going to set down. There wasn’t going to be any welcoming committee there anyway.” 

About 5½ hours later at 10:56 p.m. Eastern Time, Armstrong stepped on the moon. Although his image was a fuzzy black and white, his words were clear, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” and we have remembered them as such ever since. His later notation that he said the “a” as well is a bit of trivia lost to personal and collective memory. 

After their four-day transit, Armstrong and Aldrin walked the moon for 151 minutes collecting rocks and setting up instruments to be left behind and monitored from Earth. The next day they rendezvoused with Collins in the orbiting Command Module, blasted out of orbit, and splashed down in the Pacific on the morning of July 24. The three were quarantined against the possibility of having contracted a moon germ until August 10. No one became ill. Apollo 11 ’s 34 pounds (15 kg) of rock and soil samples were the first of 836 total pounds the program would eventually bring back for study. No signs of life have been found.

Life After NASA 

After Apollo 11  Armstrong continued to work with NASA but became frustrated by requests from NASA, congress, and the White House for “appearances on demand.” For a man who reveled in the thoughtfulness of engineering and the challenges of real-world flying and test-piloting, Armstrong found coming home to celebrity disconcerting. “It was a real burden,” he says. “I didn’t have a choice.” Although he says he was a bit late in taking up Charles Lindbergh’s admonition to never give autographs, his continuing quest for privacy earned him the nickname Lunar Lindbergh. “I’d be harassed all the time if I weren’t reclusive,” he says. 

For the next decade, Armstrong rattled from place to place, never touching down in the tranquility of a quiet life. In 1971 he left NASA to teach at the University at Cincinnati but left in 1979 because of “lots of new rules,” which he found burdensome. Corporate concerns became his primary focus for the rest of his professional life. “I am,” he says, “and ever will be a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer. And I take substantial pride in the accomplishments of my profession.” 

While no one can blame Armstrong for his reluctance to endure the glare of the public spotlight, his reticence to forcefully promote human advancement in space certainly gave the stage over to those voices calling for budget savings. The Apollo program came to an end in 1972 with Apollo 17 . Armstrong was able to do everything expected of a pilot and engineer: he was a technical success. But after the mission, he could not do what was needed most: be the “everyman” who could push mankind’s quest forward. 

Calling it a “triumph that failed,” New York Times  reporter John N. Wilford echoes this sentiment. Although the moon landing was technically magnificent, “because of misdirected expectations and a general misperception of its real meaning,” Wilford says, Apollo 11 was seen as the destination rather than just the beginning. “The public was encouraged to view it only as the grand climax of the space program, a geopolitical horse race and extraterrestrial entertainment—not as a dramatic means to the greater end of developing a far-ranging spacefaring capability. This led to the space program’s post-Apollo slump.”

Speaking at the 200 th anniversary of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, Armstrong compared the early settlers’ westward drive to man’s trip to the moon. “The need to build a new world is what lifts man’s horizons in search of the future. Without these horizons, a man turns inward and is concerned only with himself. With them, he thinks more about tomorrow than today, more about society than himself.”

So what kind of a world has humankind built? Technologically, we have accomplished awesome feats, yet as individuals we are constrained by inner demons that plague and prevent us from solving some of our oldest problems. 

Governments compete against one another to be the first to land on the moon, Mars and beyond, but do little to moderate and deconstruct the competitive urges that drive the race. 

Humankind’s great tragic quality is our reluctance to take one small step toward right relationships with others. Despite our impressive technological capacities, suspicion and hatred cloud our best interpersonal intentions; we may claim that “we come in peace,” but the possibility of a weaponized space cannot be ignored today, just as it could not 50 years ago. How little things change in the human realm.

Neil Armstrong represents all of us; he exemplifies the human strength to overcome setbacks and adversities and continue forward. But when the mission is over, there remains a void. As STS-125 Commander Scott Altman told Vision , while today’s astronauts stand on the shoulders of those who pioneered the way before, they feel some jealousy for what the next generation will have the opportunity to accomplish. There is a bittersweet yearning for the unknown that will come next.

Wanting something more is a feeling that runs as deep today as it did in King David’s day. Yet human strength alone will not carry us as far as Psalm 8 promises; as annotated by the apostle Paul, we will have access in ways we cannot yet imagine. One day, when the time is right, even the universe will be at our command: “ all things  in subjection under his feet” (Hebrews 2:5–8, emphasis added).

It’s in man’s nature to be inquisitive, to want the universe. But without the character and wisdom to harness our ambitions, the new world we seek will look no different than the one we've left behind. 

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Neil Armstrong facts!

Check out our ten top facts about neil armstrong….

Learn about the first man who walked on the Moon in our 10 amazing Neil Armstrong facts…

Neil Armstrong facts

Full name: Neil Alden Armstrong Date of birth: 5 August 1930 Hometown: Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.A. Occupation: Astronaut, military pilot, professor Died: 25 August 2012 Best known for: Being the first human to walk on the moon

1) Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon during the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Apollo 11 mission on 20th July 1969. He completed the mission alongside co-pilots Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins .

2) When Neil was a child growing up in rural America, he loved to learn all about aeroplanes and space . He got his student pilot’s licence when he was just 16 — before he even learned to drive a car!

3) When Neil was 17, he went to university to study aeronautical engineering — the science used in the designing, building and testing of aircrafts. Clever!

3) Around the world, more than half a billion people watched the Moon Landing. When Neil stepped foot on the moon for the first time, he said the now famous line, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

4) Neil walked a distance of about 60 metres on the surface of the moon —that’s roughly the length of 11 Asian elephants!

5) The rocket that launched Neil and his crew into space – the Saturn V rocket – was as tall as a 36-storey building! The Launch Control Center – which housed the team of people responsible for overseeing the launch from the ground – was situated 3.5 miles from the launch pad itself.

6) The Lunar Module that Neil and Buzz piloted together to land on the moon was called the Eagle . It’s where the now famous saying, “The Eagle has landed” , comes from!

7) Not only were Neil and Buzz the first humans to step foot on the moon, but they were also the first humans to view Earth from the moon’s surface. Neil said that while there, he could hold up his thumb and block out the Earth ! He said that the Moon felt lonely, but that it made him realise just how beautiful our home is.

8) When Neil and his co-pilot, Buzz, were on the moon, they collected dust materials from the moon’s surface to study back on Earth. In 2017, the samples were sold at auction for £1.4 million — wow !

9) Neil was considered a great American hero , but a reluctant hero, too. After the Apollo 11 Mission, Neil only stayed with NASA for a further two years. He found the press attention exhausting, and decided that he wanted to be a teacher of engineering in his home state of Ohio. He never returned to life in the spotlight.

10) Neil won many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, the Hubbard Medal in 1970, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978 and the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award . Sadly, Neil died in 2012, but the progress that he made for space travel and our understanding of the Moon is still remembered today!

Image credits: GPA Photo Archive, U.S. Department of State (Public Domain).

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• Neil Armstrong

• Occupation: Astronaut
• Born: August 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio
• Died: August 25, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio
• Best known for: First man to walk on the Moon

• He earned the Eagle Scout badge in Boy Scouts.
• Six hundred million people watched the first moon walk on TV.
• The footprints made by Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are still on the Moon. The dust is thick, but there isn't any wind to remove them.
• He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor a civilian can earn from the US government.
• He stopped signing autographs after he found out that people were selling them on the internet.
• Take a ten question quiz about this page.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:
• Roald Amundsen
• Daniel Boone
• Christopher Columbus
• Captain James Cook
• Hernan Cortes
• Vasco da Gama
• Sir Francis Drake
• Edmund Hillary
• Henry Hudson
• Lewis and Clark
• Ferdinand Magellan
• Francisco Pizarro
• Juan Ponce de Leon
• Spanish Conquistadores

The Incredible Case of NASA’S Missing Moondust

Neil Armstrong made history when he stepped onto the moon. Then some of the dust he carried back vanished.

The United States had been preparing for a moon landing for the better part of a decade, ever since President John F. Kennedy had declared space exploration a national priority. But no one on Earth quite understood the moon’s geology. Telescopes offered limited insights. Earlier U.S. probes had mapped the moon’s surface but never touched down. Until that day, no human had gotten within nine miles of our only satellite. The only way to answer science’s most pressing questions was to set foot on the moon, no matter the risk.

To ensure the success of the mission, NASA worked up a quicksand contingency plan. When Armstrong exited the lunar module, his first task would be to scoop up whatever material was at hand and store it in a cloth bag, labeled Lunar Sample Return, attached to his spacesuit. While the space agency hoped Armstrong would later be able to make a more thorough investigation of the lunar surface, this blind grab for material would ensure that even if the astronauts needed to make an immediate escape, they’d return to Earth with something worth analyzing.

Fortunately for Armstrong, the Sea of Tranquility lived up to its name. He took his historic steps without incident. Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin scoured the moon’s surface , collecting better lunar samples and sharing their observations with Mission Control in Houston. They found plenty of powder—the consequence of solar winds and a constant barrage of micrometeorites that beat down on the milky-white regolith. The dust followed the astronauts back into the lunar module. It smelled and tasted like gunpowder. But it was clear the moon had a solid crust, more than capable of supporting a spacecraft and its crew.

The footprints Armstrong left behind changed the way humans view their place in the universe. But from the beginning, NASA and other space explorers struggled to secure the physical artifacts of space travel, from the nuts and bolts of space vehicles to moon rocks themselves. While Armstrong’s lunar sample return bag should have been intended for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, it ended up in court. At stake was a fundamental question: Can you put a price on moondust?

The lengthy legal battle to resolve this question would involve a former NASA investigator who sided against the space agency in court, a museum curator convicted on federal charges, the U.S. Marshals Service, and a very lucky auction winner. Each had their own view on the value of space-age artifacts. But only one would win—to the tune of $2.3 million.

On July 24, the Apollo 11 team reentered Earth’s atmosphere. They’d left the lunar module on the moon. They jettisoned the service module—a long cylindrical spacecraft that had propelled the crew to the moon and provided them with electricity throughout their journey—midflight, just as planned. Finally, after days of discovery, the men splashed down into the Pacific Ocean in the command module Columbia , a cramped conical machine that encased the astronauts and their technical equipment.

With the first mission to the moon now complete, NASA set about recovering its assets. The Apollo program, which ran from 1961 to 1972, was to date one of the most expensive science experiments humankind had ever undertaken. But no one was really concerned about the monetary value of the individual items involved in the moon landing, says Louis Parker, a former NASA archivist. Lunar samples were carefully guarded, and some astronauts had sentimental attachment to “flown” objects, such as family photos or flags. But high-profile space auctions and internet trading sites like eBay were decades away. Apollo was historic, but it was not yet history.

The Columbia hit the water upside down. Three flotation bags soon inflated in the nose of the craft, righting it. Elite divers from the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team encircled the capsule with a flotation collar and removed the astronauts from the metal container. A helicopter plucked the men one by one from the water before placing them in a 21-day quarantine to ensure that they didn’t bring back any contaminants from the moon. Then began the arduous task of removing the spacecraft itself from the waves. As Mission Control in Houston puffed on celebratory cigars, the divers towed the 12,250-pound Columbia to the USS Hornet , an 872-foot-long aircraft carrier floating nearby. The command module glittered like gold under the overcast skies. A crane aboard the Hornet pulled the 12-foot-diameter craft onto the runway. There, John Hirasaki was waiting to retrieve the priceless materials inside.

Hirasaki, a mechanical engineer born into a Japanese American rice farming family, opened the hatch. He quickly retrieved Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s undeveloped film, spacesuits, and lunar samples—including the lunar sample return bag—and placed everything into metal containers for shipping. A cargo plane was on standby for the nonstop flight to Houston. The next afternoon, the shipment arrived at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and within 48 hours, NASA proudly reported that the lunar samples were being studied at the facility’s Lunar Receiving Lab.

More than a half century of research has now chipped away at the mysteries of the moon. But in the first days and weeks after Apollo 11, the lab observed that the moondust’s most notable quality was its stickiness. Solar winds not only make the dust extremely fine, like flour, but also render it electrostatic. From the moment the astronauts landed, the grains adhered to every spacesuit, every rover, every sample collection bag—and returned with them to Earth, like a semi-toxic glitter. It was almost impossible to dislodge. It would clog equipment, including the vacuum cleaner designed to remove it. Brushes did nothing to detach it. Neither did hands, which got sandpapered by the silicate in the process. Lunar samples, it was quickly becoming clear, were both priceless and a total nuisance.

NASA was formally committed to keeping its moon rocks and moondust secure in perpetuity. Back in 1967, the United Nations brokered the international Outer Space Treaty, which stated that the exploration of the moon, and any artifacts that flowed from it, “shall be the province of all mankind.” Furthermore, NASA decided that all Apollo lunar samples were national treasure and therefore the exclusive property of the U.S. government. Private ownership, in this view, is impossible. Yet the space agency struggled to secure its haul.

From the day Hirasaki’s shipment touched down in Houston, NASA studied the lunar material in-house. But the agency also loaned rocks out to research institutions and museums around the world, exposing them to theft, damage, and loss, says Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA investigator. Politics only complicated things further. In 1970, President Nixon gifted every U.S. state and territory, and 135 countries, moon rocks from the Apollo 11 mission. It was an act of goodwill, Gutheinz says, and a logistical nightmare. Gutheinz estimates that roughly 150 moon rocks are currently unaccounted for, many of them bestowed by Nixon. Rocks gifted to New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and Spain are just a few of the samples on Gutheinz’s most wanted list.

At times, NASA went to great lengths to recover its rocks. In 1998, Gutheinz led a sting operation to recover Honduras’s sample, which had landed in the hands of a former military colonel amid a coup d’état. (“My undercover name was Tony Coriasso,” Gutheinz says.) Gutheinz and his collaborators have also tracked missing goodwill moon rocks to U.S. governors’ and senators’ homes, university basements, and museum storage units. But they know that some rocks may never be found.

The government had even more trouble accounting for the other byproducts of the space race. Panels, screws, bags, gloves—no one knew exactly what was flowing into and out of Johnson Space Center. “It had grown into a pretty large monster,” Parker says. A 1967 agreement between NASA and the Smithsonian granted the National Air and Space Museum the right of first refusal over any of the objects decommissioned by the space agency. But reality got in the way.

For one, NASA took its time decommissioning its machinery. Once the Navy divers hauled the Columbia out of the Pacific, it was returned to its manufacturer, North American Rockwell, of Downey, California, where engineers studied the single-use module to see how it had performed. Rather than reuse or recycle the materials, as shuttle engineers do today, they took insights gleaned from postflight testing to guide the design and fabrication of entirely new machines for the next trip to space. Only after this testing was complete could the Smithsonian move the command module to Washington, D.C.—which they did in 1971, two years after it had dropped from the heavens.

NASA’s agreement with the Smithsonian was also undercut by handshake deals. Some engineers worked with NASA to get Apollo-era mementos formally released, with all the necessary paperwork to prove their lawful ownership. “They were pretty conscientious about that,” Parker says. “There were others that said, ‘This isn’t going to be tracked again,’” and took their favorite odds and ends home without clearance. The consequences could be serious: In 2011, when Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell tried to sell at auction a camera he’d brought back from the moon, NASA sued its 80-year-old former employee. Mitchell claimed that management had told him he could keep the camera, but NASA said it had no formal record granting Mitchell ownership. (Mitchell eventually settled the lawsuit by agreeing to donate the camera to the National Air and Space Museum.)

The biggest impediment to archiving the Apollo missions was that NASA and the Smithsonian simply didn’t have the resources to match their ambition. The Apollo program involved 25,000 companies and 400,000 employees. It generated hundreds of thousands of artifacts, some as big as a rocket but many that were even smaller than a lunar sample return bag. “The Smithsonian, they were licking their chops,” Parker says. But the curators were 1,400 miles away, in Washington, D.C. And down in Houston, things had a way of getting lost.

Johnson Space Center sits at the intersection of two lakes: Clear and Mud. From the sky, the sprawling 1,620-acre complex looks like a home plate, with more than 100 buildings clustered inside. It’s home to NASA’s Mission Control Center , specialized laboratories for everything from lunar sample analysis to space food development, and training centers that simulate the hardships of space. But in the story of Armstrong’s backup moondust, it’s perhaps Buildings 421 and 422 that matter most.

The sprawling warehouses, bigger than a football field, still sit at the northern edge of the complex, along Space Center Boulevard. In the 1970s, the buildings, along with an adjoining storage yard, were dedicated to the “excess property” generated by the Apollo program. As the program was ending, manufacturers from around the country were returning every single nut and bolt to headquarters. There, NASA employees and volunteers sorted through semitruck shipments, airdrops, and even the wastebaskets of other Johnson Space Center employees.

Among the eager recruits was a 25-year-old named Max Ary. While NASA didn’t always see the value in its “excess property,” Ary did.

As the enthusiastic new director of a Fort Worth planetarium, Ary began writing to NASA after each lunar mission, asking for photos and technical manuals. “I was a child of the Space Age,” Ary says. “I’ll never forget, I was seven years old, waking up one morning in 1957 to my Roy Rogers alarm clock and hearing about this thing called Sputnik .” For years, Ary read every word about spaceflight, studied every diagram. Eventually he started reaching out to the manufacturers themselves on behalf of the planetarium. Whirlpool was one company to send him spare parts from their Apollo program­—in that case, a water gun designed to rehydrate food in space. “When I’d go to return them, they’d say, ‘No, keep ’em, we don’t need them,’” Ary says. And so his planetarium’s collection began to grow.

Soon Ary had amassed a body of knowledge that impressed even the Smithsonian. In 1975, he was invited to join an ad hoc group of Apollo enthusiasts who would take turns looking for treasure on behalf of the National Air and Space Museum. Ary and his fellow volunteers logged the parts piling up in Buildings 421 and 422, where crates were stacked to the ceilings. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when it was all said and done, there were half a million items,” Ary says. Using old-fashioned film cameras, they photographed every object of historical significance for curators in Washington, D.C., to review. If the Smithsonian liked an object, Ary and his colleagues stored it or shipped it for them. “I made many trips down to Houston,” Ary says. “Each trip got longer and longer.”

Some days it was dull administrative work. Each object had a part number and serial number. No one wanted to spend the money on a mainframe computer for excess inventory, Ary recalls, so Chuck Biggs, the director of public services at NASA, developed his own handwritten inventory system. Sorters wrote down each digit of each code on a legal pad, before transferring it to a typewritten form in triplicate. “It was almost an optical illusion,” Ary says. Logging items on little sleep, Ary and his colleagues knew they were making mistakes in the process. But in those days, there was no other option. “You write it down and hope for the best,” Ary says.

Other days were action-packed. “Back then, the excess-property system had a lot more holes in it,” Parker says. If Parker, Ary, or another scavenger didn’t claim a box for the Smithsonian, Parker says the delivery guys “just took it out to dumpsters and got rid of it.” NASA had an objective: Make way for the new space shuttle program. Ary remembers a shipment arriving with a nondescript label like “chairs.” But when he took a look inside the truck, he recalls, “well, here were the ejection seats” from a recent space shuttle simulator. Ary begged the driver to wait for the paperwork they needed to save the seats. The driver was impatient to move on. “I literally jumped up on the front of the truck—on the hood of the truck—and said, ‘Stop!’”

Ary saved the simulator seats from being junked. But countless other objects were melted down for metal or incinerated. “Thousands and thousands of these artifacts were just destroyed out of desperation,” Ary says. “I don’t even want to think about what we missed.”

Lunar samples were the one thing the excess-property team should never have encountered. The rocks and the dust had been designated national treasures before they’d even been collected. Any item that may have come into contact with moon rocks or moondust was sent to the Lunar Receiving Lab for processing. “Supposedly they kept track of all 842 pounds that came back,” Ary says, “and they would keep track of it to a fraction of a gram.” But things occasionally slipped through the cracks. In 2011, for example, the government recovered a single piece of tape that NASA photographer Terry Slezak had used to remove lunar dust from his fingers decades earlier. If Ary or his colleagues ever stumbled upon what looked like extraterrestrial soil, they knew what to do: Send it back to the Lunar Receiving Lab immediately.

Parker, who retired from NASA in 2011, says he’s forgetting some of the details of those days. But, he says, “Max was the ultimate scavenger.” Ary helped save many priceless artifacts for the Smithsonian. Today the Air and Space Museum has more than 3,500 artifacts from the Apollo moon landing alone, including the Apollo 11 command module Columbia ; Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, visor, and gloves; and the mobile quarantine facility the astronauts lived in aboard the USS Hornet . “You could spend your whole career going through the artifacts,” Parker says.

That still left thousands of objects without a home. NASA’s contractors never made one of any given item. They often made dozens. There were prototypes and test versions, and, of course, the final products flown to the moon. Unopened packs of astronaut food and duplicates of bags made of beta cloth (a fireproof material developed by NASA for space travel) still had value, Ary says, but they weren’t heading to the nation’s capital. So Ary improvised a mutually beneficial solution: He would ship these lesser artifacts to his own museum. “We can throw them away just as easily as you can,” he told NASA and the Smithsonian.

By 1976, Ary had uprooted his collection from the Fort Worth planetarium and moved to Hutchinson, Kansas. There he was busy transforming a local museum into the Cosmosphere, today a world-class air and space museum. Over time, Ary’s museum board acquired thousands of square feet of storage to house excess Space Age artifacts out on the prairie. “I’d estimate we probably saved well over 100,000 artifacts that would have never survived,” Ary says.

From then on, objects of national significance were always passing through Hutchinson. Ary had gained a reputation for his reassembly and restoration skills. When NASA shipped a command module simulator by boat, the machine took on seawater, causing rust. Ary agreed to refurbish it for free, provided he could display it at the Cosmosphere. “I can remember walking into his shop facility,” Parker says, “and he had this thing literally laid out all over the floor. I was impressed he’d taken it all apart like that.” The real shock came a few months later: “It was all put back together,” Parker says. “It looked like it just rolled off the assembly line.”

But it seemed like the Cosmosphere’s storage unit had been forgotten by everyone but Ary. “Some of the stuff I had, I had for 30 years,” Ary says. “NASA never asked about it. The Smithsonian never asked about it.” Over time, the lack of interest from the government led him to a regrettable conclusion: “You just make the assumption, well, it’s kind of mine, I guess,” Ary says.

The sky collapsed on Ary one night in 2003. He got a call from a friend, the astronaut Gene Cernan, who was the eleventh man to walk on the moon. Cernan had some alarming news: The FBI had just interviewed him. The topic of conversation? Max Ary.

At the turn of the millennium, the sale of space memorabilia was heating up. What NASA had considered junk just a few decades before was now selling for thousands of dollars at auction houses and on newly launched sites like eBay. A 1999 space sale at Christie’s “reset the industry,” says Robert Pearlman, founder and editor of CollectSPACE, an online clearinghouse for all things aerospace history. Lots included an equipment locker pried from the Apollo 13 command module, Gemini-era gloves, and a piece of a beta-cloth bag used on the moon. What started off as a normal auction, Pearlman recalls, quickly turned into “somewhat of a stunner.” One of Armstrong’s spacesuits, valued at $60,000 to $80,000, went for $178,500. “Suddenly we realize, everything has changed,” Pearlman says.

NASA itself was also undergoing a major change. The Apollo program had brought thousands of recent college graduates together to put a man on the moon. That meant by the 1990s, thousands of NASA contractors were reaching retirement age around the same time. “Back then, you had people who came in, did their jobs, they didn’t worry about all the aftereffects,” Parker says of the Apollo program. But when a new generation of NASA scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers took charge, they had a new attitude: Get a handle on the moon rocks, astronaut memorabilia, and other space-age artifacts. And fast.

Gutheinz, the NASA investigator, had spent much of the 1990s hunting down fraudsters selling fake moondust. When he realized just how many real moon rocks were missing, he started setting up sting operations to recover the material. While most of the more mundane sales—of manuals and space shuttle models—were aboveboard, prosecutors were watchful for ill-gotten space goods.

The year before Cernan’s call, in 2002, Ary had left Hutchinson behind. “I had a bucket list,” he says. “I achieved all the items on that bucket list.” The Cosmosphere’s for-profit subsidiary, Space Works, consulted on the 1995 blockbuster film Apollo 13 . The museum helped the Discovery Channel pull the Liberty Bell 7 , a sunken Project Mercury–era spacecraft, from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and restore it for public display. Ary’s closest collaborator, Patty Carey, was in her ninth decade. It was time, Ary felt, to move on. Now the Cosmosphere and the U.S. government were claiming that Ary had stolen their property.

What exactly happened depends on who you ask, says Pearlman, who documented each development in Ary’s case for CollectSPACE readers. When Ary left the Cosmosphere, the curator who replaced him conducted an audit of the museum’s roughly 12,000 pieces. The curator noticed that some items were missing—about 400 in total, when first reported. Some had been loaned for the Apollo 13 film and never returned, subsequent investigations revealed. Others turned up with time. But still others had been auctioned online.

In 1999, court documents show, Ary had created two accounts with Superior Galleries, an auction house based in Los Angeles. One was a personal account, and one was an account for the museum. This was not in itself illegal; Ary was a private collector, and museums buy, sell, and trade items from their collections all the time. But over the next two years, Ary went on to sell a number of items through his personal account that didn’t technically belong to him, according to the U.S. Attorney in Wichita, pursuing the case on behalf of NASA.

Between the items Ary sold online and the artifacts recovered by the FBI during a raid on his home, about 120 of the Cosmosphere’s missing objects were connected to Ary. Of the ones Ary auctioned, two had been loaned to the Cosmosphere by NASA: a flown list of codes used by the command module computer and an Apollo 15 tape.

In April 2005, Ary was indicted in federal court on counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, theft of government property, and interstate transportation of stolen property. In court, former coworkers, including Louis Parker from NASA, were called to testify. That November, a jury convicted Ary on 12 counts and he would later serve two years in prison.

Other collectors of space memorabilia got caught in the fray. Pearlman was among those who’d unknowingly purchased an item at auction that courts later determined Ary did not have the right to sell. The CollectSPACE founder had won a detached spacesuit pocket at auction that had been labeled as a backup produced for Apollo 16. “In the course of the court case, it was revealed it actually flew on Apollo 16, so I got an incredible deal on it,” Pearlman jokes. But after the federal government contacted Pearlman, he returned the object to the Smithsonian.

Ary, now 74, maintains his innocence. He says the intermingling of his personal collection with the Cosmosphere’s from the museum’s inception, combined with clerical errors stretching back to the 1970s, were to blame for the confusion. But in the minds of NASA’s new guard, Ary says, his explanations were worthless. No one believed that “these artifacts could have been thrown away,” Ary says. It didn’t matter, he adds, that “they didn’t know the difference between a Mercury capsule or a Tylenol capsule.” That part of Apollo history—of what transpired in Buildings 421 and 422—had already been lost.

Today Ary is back to work, this time as the director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma. While he has a startlingly quick memory of events long past, he still struggles to talk about the emotional impact of his legal odyssey and two years behind bars. “At the time, it didn’t go by very fast,” Ary says. “I decided, ‘I have to get this out of my mind. I can’t do anything about it.’” Now he tries to see it as one chapter of an otherwise momentous 55-year career. But one man’s worst nightmare would soon prove to be another woman’s lucky break.

In March 2015, Nancy Lee Carlson, a lawyer with a passion for space exploration, scrolled through a Texas-based auction company catalog. A white beta-cloth bag piqued her interest. The details were sparse: “One flown zippered lunar sample return bag with lunar dust (“Lunar Bag”), 11.5 inches; tear at center,” the listing read. “Flown Mission Unknown.” But, Carlson told the Wall Street Journal , she felt that the bag “had a story I could figure out.” She nabbed it for $995—more than she’d ever spent at auction before. (Carlson could not be reached for further comment.)

When the bag arrived at Carlson’s home in Inverness, Illinois, the inside was coated with a sticky dust. She decided to ship the bag to NASA for further testing. Before she sent it off, Carlson had also found a part number, clearly labeled inside. After a few months of digging, and radio silence from NASA, Carlson found a corresponding code in the Apollo 11 inventory: “V36-788-034 Decontamination bag, contingency lunar SRC.” The story was coming together—and it was a good one.

In May 2016, after months of waiting, Carlson got the confirmation: Her bag indeed contained lunar dust from moon rock samples collected during Apollo 11. And they weren’t just any sample. The specific geology of the rocks, along with the part number, suggested that her bag was the one Armstrong used to collect the first-ever samples of the moon. The hidden gem had been among Max Ary’s assets seized by the U.S. Marshals Service. It was mistakenly auctioned off to pay for Ary’s court-ordered restitution to previous buyers like Pearlman.

The news came from a surprising source. Instead of NASA’s moon rock laboratory, Carlson heard from the District Attorney in Kansas. NASA had asked the court to revoke the results of the auction. The agency claimed that it was the rightful owner of the bag, along with the moondust inside. The government was willing to give Carlson $995 for her trouble. So Carlson decided to sue the U.S. government.

Ary says he never knew the value of the bag. NASA claims to have lent the bag to the Cosmosphere in 1981, but the agency was not able to find a loan agreement. Ary thinks it’s more likely he picked it up in the 1970s when he was routinely sorting objects at Johnson Space Center.

In those days, cloth bags were so commonplace that NASA shipped some of its artifacts with the bags as packing material, Ary recalls. “You had enough bags to cover the earth,” he says. “You didn’t even look at them after a while.” In hindsight, Ary believes this particular bag looked so worn that he probably planned to cut it up into scraps for students to touch, as he often did with spare beta cloth. “Probably the most interesting thing about that bag was how uninteresting it was,” he says.

Fortunately, Ary never got around to slicing and dicing. Instead, the bag entered into the Cosmosphere’s records in the early 1980s with a description similar to the one offered by the auction house: “Lunar Sample Return Bag, Flown Mission Unknown.” Its value was estimated at $15. When Ary left for a new job, the bag somehow ended up with him.

Now that NASA knew the true value of the worn-out beta cloth, the agency was desperate to keep it. “This artifact was never meant to be owned by an individual,” NASA spokesperson William Jeffs said in a 2017 statement. It had both scientific and historical significance and had been sold to Carlson by accident. NASA wasn’t wrong: Proper procedure dictated that the U.S. Marshals work with NASA to identify anything the government wanted among Ary’s personal possessions before auctioning them off. And there was precedent for seizing other lunar samples that entered the market, like Gutheinz and his Honduran goodwill moon rock sting operation.

To everyone’s surprise, Gutheinz, now retired from NASA, ended up supporting Carlson’s case. “I’m guilty as probably anyone else at NASA, because my gut-level first reaction to this was, ‘This isn’t her property. This is a national treasure,’” Gutheinz says. But he looked deeper and determined the fault was with the U.S. Marshals, for not clearing the sale with NASA. Once they’d made their error, the sale to a private citizen was perfectly legal. “I do not believe in private ownership,” Gutheinz says, “except for Nancy Lee Carlson.”

A U.S. district court agreed. In 2016, after a yearlong court battle, a federal judge ruled that NASA must return the bag to Carlson. In 2019, Carlson sold it at auction for $1.8 million. “This is my Mona Lisa moment,” Cassandra Hatton, an expert with Sotheby’s auction house, has said. But NASA never returned the moondust test samples from inside the bag, so Carlson sued NASA once more. She won again and quickly set about selling this artifact, too.

To find a buyer, Carlson now turned to Bonhams. The international auction house has dealt in art, antiquities, and rare books, as well as artifacts from the history of science and technology, since the 18th century. Adam Stackhouse, a specialist at Bonhams, knew that Carlson had something special on her hands. “You hold it and it just really transports you to that moment,” he says. It was like holding the moon landing in your hands. But the story was mostly in the holder’s head.

To collect the dust for testing, NASA scientists had scoured the interior of the lunar sample bag with carbon tape, going so far as to rip the bag open at the seams for better access to the invisible grains. Then they affixed the black strips to aluminum discs and analyzed them under a scanning electron microscope. When the electrons hit the atoms in the moondust, it created a black-and-white image of the lunar sample’s topography. Cool—but invisible to the naked eye.

What really enticed prospective buyers to line up or log on to the hybrid auction in April 2022 was that Carlson’s sample had a one-of-a-kind provenance. In previous cases where moon samples had fallen into private hands, NASA had successfully reclaimed the rocks or dust. Carlson’s sample was different. “It was NASA verified,” Stackhouse says. “It was legal to sell.” It was, for now, most buyers’ only hope of owning a piece of the moon. In the end, the specks sold for just over $500,000.

Space-age sales skyrocketed in the 1990s, and they’ve never fallen back to Earth. As with art or antiques, collectors see the value in NASA-originated artifacts. But the way they show their care can vary widely: Some collectors protect objects overlooked by museums, while others find ways to share their belongings with the world. Still others keep things for themselves.

To date, the collector (or collectors) who purchased Armstrong’s bag and the moondust inside has chosen to remain anonymous. They have not elected to loan their objects out to a museum, either. Space enthusiasts like Pearlman can only speculate about the fate of the artifacts. Perhaps the objects are displayed in a wealthy person’s home, he says. Or secured in a vault like any other asset, and not enjoyed by anyone. They are all perfectly valid choices, Pearlman says, but the anonymity eats at him. “I would just like to have some public accountability so it’s not lost to history—again,” he says.

As new countries set their sights on the moon, including Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, and the United Arab Emirates, questions of ownership become even more complicated. How will other space agencies choose to handle their moon rocks? What will the United States, which plans to land a woman and a person of color on the moon in the Artemis program, do differently this time? And what lengths will people continue to go to in order to get their hands on a piece of the moon?

Eleanor Cummins is a freelance science journalist in Brooklyn whose work can be found in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic, The Verge, WIRED, and more. She is also an adjunct professor at New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program.

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Neil Armstrong Biography Reading Comprehension Passage Printable Worksheet PDF

Subject: English

Age range: 10 - 16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

21 March 2024

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Summary of passage

Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, was born in Ohio in 1930. From a young age, he was fascinated by flying and became a skilled pilot. In 1962, Armstrong joined NASA’s astronaut program and trained for years to operate the spacecraft that would take him to the moon. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong, along with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, landed on the moon’s surface in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” marked this historic achievement. He continued to contribute to space exploration and retired from NASA in 1971 to become a professor. Armstrong’s bravery and dedication continue to inspire people worldwide, and his legacy as one of the greatest explorers in history lives on.

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