- NAME:
- Neil Armstrong
- OCCUPATION:
- Astronaut, Explorer, Pilot
- BIRTH DATE:
- August 05, 1930
- DEATH DATE:
- August 25, 2012
- EDUCATION:
- Purdue University, University of Cincinnati
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut,test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor and United States Naval Aviator. He was the first person to walk on the Moon. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was aUnited States Navy officer and had served in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He graduated from Purdue University and the University of Southern California.
A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. His first spaceflight was the NASA Gemini 8 mission in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians in space.[1] On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft with pilot David Scott.
Astronaut career
There was no defining moment in Armstrong's decision to become an astronaut. In 1958, he was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest program. In November 1960, Armstrong was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane; and on March 15, 1962, he was named as one of six pilot-engineers who would fly the space plane when it got off the design board.[40]
In the months after the announcement that applications were being sought for the second group of NASA astronauts, Armstrong became more and more excited about the prospects both of the Apollo program and of investigating a new aeronautical environment. Armstrong's astronaut application had arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962 deadline, but Dick Day, with whom Armstrong had worked closely at Edwards, worked at the Manned Spacecraft Center, saw the late arrival of the application, and slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed. At Brooks City-Base at the end of June, Armstrong underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and at times seemingly pointless.
Deke Slayton called Armstrong on September 13, 1962 and asked whether he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed "the New Nine"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports had been circulating since earlier that year that he would be selected as the "first civilian astronaut". Armstrong was one of two civilian pilots selected for the second group, the other being Elliot See who, like Armstrong, was a Naval Aviator.[1] Armstrong did not become the first civilian to fly in space, as the Russians had launched Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963 with Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker and amateur parachutist, aboard.
Voyage to th
See also: Apollo 11 – Lunar surface operations
Although the official NASA flight plan called for a crew rest period before extra-vehicular activity, Armstrong requested that the EVA be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. Once Armstrong and Aldrin were ready to go outside,Eagle was depressurized, the hatch was opened and Armstrong made his way down the ladder first.
At the bottom of the ladder, Armstrong said "I'm going to step off the LEM now" (referring to the Apollo Lunar Module). He then turned and set his left boot on the surface at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969,[77] then spoke the famous words "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."[78]
Armstrong had decided on this statement following a train of thought that he had had after launch and during the hours after landing.[79] The broadcast did not have the "a" before "man", rendering the phrase a contradiction (as man in such use is synonymous withmankind). NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static had obscured the "a", with Armstrong stating he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, Armstrong admitted he must have dropped the "a".[78] Armstrong later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said – although it might actually have been".[80]
It has since been claimed that acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a";[78][81] Peter Shann Ford, an Australia-based computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did, in fact, say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time.[78][82][83]Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis.[84] The article by Ford, however, is published on Ford's own web site rather than in a peer-reviewedscientific journal, and linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log.[85]Although Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive",[86] he has expressed his preference that written quotations include the "a" in parentheses.[citation needed]
When Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice of America was rebroadcast live via the BBC and many other stations worldwide. The estimated global audience at that moment was 450 million listeners,[87] out of a then estimated world population of 3.631 billion people.[88]
About 20 minutes after the first step, Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface and became the second human to set foot on the Moon, and the duo began their tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface. Early on, they unveiled a plaque commemorating their flight, and also planted the flag of the United States. The flag used on this mission had a metal rod to hold it horizontal from its pole. Since the rod did not fully extend, and the flag was tightly folded and packed during the journey, the flag ended up with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a breeze.[89] Shortly after their flag planting, President Richard Nixon spoke to them by a telephone call from his office. The President spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about thirty seconds.[90]
In the entire Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of photographic tasks to be performed by Armstrong with a single Hasselblad camera.[91]
After helping to set up the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a walk to what is now known as East Crater, 65 yards (59 m) east of the LM, the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. Armstrong's final task was to leave a small package of memorial items to deceased Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom,Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. The time spent on EVA during Apollo 11 was about two and a half hours, the shortest of any of the six Apollo lunar landing missions;[92] each of the subsequent five landings were allotted gradually longer periods for EVA activities – the crew of Apollo 17, by comparison, spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface.[92]
Return to Earth
After they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for the liftoff from the lunar surface, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, in their bulky spacesuits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine; using part of a pen, they pushed the circuit breaker in to activate the launch sequence,[93] and Aldrin still possesses the pen which they used to do this. The lunar module then continued to its rendezvous and docked with Columbia, the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific ocean, to be picked up by the USS Hornet (CV-12).[94]
After being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew were feted across the United States and around the world as part of a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour. Armstrong then took part inBob Hope's 1969 USO show, primarily to Vietnam.[95]
In May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the 13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after arriving inLeningrad from Poland, he traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei Kosygin. He was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, which Armstrong described as "a bit Victorian in nature".[96] At the end of the day, he was surprised to view delayed video of the launch of Soyuz 9 – it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board.[97]
Life after Apollo
Teaching
Armstrong announced shortly after the Apollo 11 flight that he did not plan to fly in space again.[98] He was appointed Deputy Associate Administrator for aeronautics for the Office of Advanced Research and Technology, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but served in this position for only a year, and resigned from it and NASA as a whole in 1971.[99]
He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at theUniversity of Cincinnati,[100] having decided on Cincinnati over other universities, including his alma mater, Purdue, because it had a small Aerospace department; he hoped that the faculty members would not be annoyed that he came straight into a professorship with only the USC master's degree.[101] He began the work while stationed at Edwards years before, and finally completed it after Apollo 11 by presenting a report on various aspects of Apollo, instead of a thesis on the simulation of hypersonic flight. The official job title he received at Cincinnati was University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. After teaching for eight years, he resigned in 1979 without explaining his reason for leavinge Moon
During the Apollo 11 launch, Armstrong's heart reached a top rate of 110 beats per minute.[66] He found the first stage to be the loudest – much noisier than the Gemini 8Titan II launch – and the Apollo CSM was relatively roomy compared to the Gemini capsule. This ability to move around was suspected to be the cause of space sicknessthat had hit members of previous crews, but none of the Apollo 11 crew suffered from it; Armstrong was especially happy, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after doing long periods of aerobatics.[67]
The objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than to touch down with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Eagle would probably touch down beyond the planned landing zone by several miles.[68] As theEagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin was aware of what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by an executive overflow in the lunar module computer. As described by Buzz Aldrin in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, the overflow condition was caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, so the computer had to process unnecessary radar data and did not have enough time to execute all tasks, dropping lower-priority ones. Aldrin stated that he did so with the objective of facilitating re-docking with the CM should an abort become necessary, not realizing that it would cause the overflow condition.[citation needed]
When Armstrong noticed they were heading towards a landing area which he believed was unsafe, he took over manual control of the LM, and attempted to find an area which seemed safer, taking longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken.[69]For this reason, there was concern from mission control that the LM was running low on fuel.[70] Upon landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had about 40 seconds worth of fuel left, including the 20 seconds worth of fuel which had to be saved in the event of an abort.[71] During training, Armstrong had landed the LLTV with less than 15 seconds left on several occasions, and he was also confident the LM could survive a straight-down fall from 50 feet (15 m) if needed. Analysis after the mission showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn time left.[72]
The landing on the surface of the moon occurred at 20:17:39 UTC on July 20, 1969.[73] When a sensor attached to the legs of the still hovering Lunar Module made lunar contact, a panel light inside the LM lit up and Aldrin called out, "Contact light." As the LM settled on the surface Aldrin then said, "Okay. Engine stop," and Armstrong said, "Shutdown." The first words Armstrong intentionally spoke to Mission Control and the world from the lunar surface were, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back before quickly returning to the checklist of tasks needed to ready the lunar module for liftoff from the Moon should an emergency unfold during the first moments on the lunar surface. During the critical landing, the only message from Houston was "30 seconds", meaning the amount of fuel left. When Armstrong had confirmed touch-down, Houston expressed their worries during the manual landing as "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again".
Illness and death
Armstrong underwent surgery on August 7, 2012, to relieve blocked coronary arteries. He died on August 25, in Cincinnati, Ohio, following complications resulting from these cardiovascular procedures. Hours later, President Barack Obama released a statement on Armstrong's death describing him as "among the greatest of American heroes – not just of his time, but of all time." According to a statement released by the White House, Obama added that he, along with the Apollo 11 crew, carried the aspirations of the United States' citizens and that Armstrong had delivered "a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten".
Armstrong's family also released a statement that read "[he was a] reluctant American hero [and had] served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves."
Armstrong's family statement made the tribute "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." This prompted many responses including the Twitter hashtag "#WinkAtTheMoon"
His colleague on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin, commented that he was "very saddened to learn of the passing. 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." Command module pilotMichael Collins said simply, "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly." NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that Armstrong will be "remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own."
I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street.
– Neil Armstrong
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