Neil Armstrong The Moon Missions Channel

Neil Armstrong Biography (1930–2012) Astronaut, educator and military pilot, Neil Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, by becoming the first man to walk on the moon. 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 organisation 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 Astronaut Neil 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...

Neil Armstrong was famous among military aviators for his bold test flights. On July 20, 1969, he became the first man to set foot on the moon, Unlike his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, Armstrong was not a military officer assigned to NASA.  He was a civilian, but as a naval aviator during the Korean War, he flew F9F Panther fighter-bombers from an aircraft carrier off the coast of North Korea. In the course of five combat tours he earned a reputation as one of the best pilots in the Navy. He quit the Navy after graduating from Purdue, becoming a full-time civilian researcher and test pilot, first at the Lewis National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) center outside Cleveland, Ohio (now called NASA Glenn), and later out of the legendary Edwards Air Force Base in the California high desert.  Watch Neil Armstrong's historical X-15 flight test here. Armstrong became famous for flying the dangerous and ...

NASA's Vaults Show How They Assembled Apollo 11 Saturn V. 45 years ago today—on July 16, 1969—astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched to the Moon on top of the mightiest spaceship ever built. These amazing photos from NASA's vaults show how they built and launched that spaceship—I look at them in awe and admiration. It was the most important trip in the history of humankind, a trip that many deemed impossible—some people still do think it's impossible—an odyssey that started many years before and changed our perception of the world itself. Only eight years before this day—on on May 25, 1961—Kennedy announced a plan to go to the Moon. It was a plan that they didn't have. In fact, the mere idea was one that almost everyone thought was impossible to do in that time frame . Just think about this: The United States only launched its first man to space on May 5, 1961—and he didn't even orbited the Earth. That happened after K...