Neil Armstrong

Armstrong grew up near Wapakoneta, Ohio, studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue on a Navy scholarship, and flew combat missions in Korea from the USS Essex. After the war he became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, flying the X-15 seven times and Century Series fighters. Selected by NASA in 1962, he commanded Gemini 8 in 1966 and performed the first spacecraft docking before a thruster malfunction forced an abort. On July 20, 1969, he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon; the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the lunar module while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong resigned from NASA in 1971, taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati for eight years, and later served on the boards investigating Apollo 13 and the Challenger disaster. He died in 2012 at eighty-two, following coronary bypass surgery.