Image: NASA
Neil Armstrong has died at the age of 82.
As reported by the Associated Press, Armstrong died following “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures,” according to a statement from his family.
Armstrong was the commander of Apollo 11. On July 20, 1969, together with fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, he landed the mission’s Lunar Module on the surface of the moon, and six hours later, he climbed down the ladder of the spacecraft, becoming the first human to walk on another world.
He retired from NASA 41 years ago today, just over two years after his historic mission with Aldrin and Michael Collins, who orbited the moon as the Lunar Module descended to the surface.
Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio and first soloed an airplane just a few weeks after his sixteenth birthday. Before being selected as an astronaut, Armstrong was a naval aviator flying F9F Panther fighter jets in the Korean War. After the War, he became a research pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA. While a research pilot, he flew the rocket powered Bell X-1B and the North American X-15 along with a wide variety of jet and propeller aircraft.
During his time in the X-15 program, now under NASA, Armstrong demonstrated his engineering skills working on the hypersonic aircraft’s flight control system as well as the relatively primitive simulator used to develop flight profiles of the first winged aircraft to fly into space.
At the same time, Armstrong was working on the X-15 program, he also worked on the X-20 Dynasoar project, part of the Air Force’s ‘Man in Space Soonest’ program. The veteran test pilot flew a modified Douglas F5D fighter jet (now on display at the Neil Amrstrong Museum in Wapakoneta) on a series of flights to develop launch abort procedures that were to be used for the winged X-20 spacecraft.
Armstrong joined the astronaut core as part of the “new nine” and first flew on Gemini 8. In 1968, the now space flight veteran was selected as commander of Apollo 11, the first mission slated to land on the moon.
After retiring from NASA, Armstrong went on to be a professor of aerospace engineering and served on the board of various companies.
