Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is a former American astronaut, test pilot, university professor, and naval aviator. He is the first person to have set foot on the Moon. His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 8 in 1966, for which he was the command pilot. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft together with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this famous "giant leap for mankind", Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface ("The Eagle has landed") and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins orbited above.

Astronaut selection and early training
There was no defining moment in Armstrong's decision to become an astronaut. In the months after the announcement that applications were being sought for the second group of astronauts, he became more and more excited about the prospect of the Apollo program and the prospect of investigating a new aeronautical environment. Many years later, it was disclosed that Armstrong's astronaut application had arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962 deadline. 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 Air Force Base at the end of June he 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 if he was interested in joining the 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 the middle of summer that year that he would be selected as the "first civilian astronaut".

Apollo 11
After serving as backup commander for Apollo 8, Slayton offered Armstrong the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as 8 orbited the Moon. In a meeting that was not made public until the publication of Armstrong's biography in 2005, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Armstrong as commander, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins, he was offering the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the Lunar Module Pilot, unofficially ranked as number three on the crew. Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number 3 position of the crew.

Initially, Aldrin thought that he would be first to walk on the Moon, based on the experience of Gemini; during that program, the pilot conducted the EVAs while the command pilot, who had greater responsibilities and less time to train for an EVA, stayed on board. However, when that actual procedure was tried with suited-up astronauts in an Apollo LM mockup, the LM was damaged – in order for Aldrin (LM Pilot) to get out first, he had to climb over Armstrong (commander) to get to the door.

A March 1969 meeting between Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Chris Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in some part because NASA management saw Armstrong as a person who did not have a large ego. A press conference held on April 14, 1969 gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the lunar module pilot, on the right-hand side, to egress first. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out...I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision." At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch issue. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his 2001 autobiography.

On July 16, 1969, Armstrong received a crescent moon carved out of Styrofoam from the pad leader, Guenter Wendt, who described it as a key to the Moon. In return, Armstrong gave Wendt a ticket for a "space taxi" "good between two planets".
Voyage to the Moon

During the Apollo 11 launch, Armstrong's heart reached a top rate of 109 beats per minute. He found the first stage to be the loudest — much noisier than the Gemini 8 Titan II launch – and the Apollo CSM was relatively roomy compared to the confinement of the Gemini capsule. This inability to move around was suspected to be the cause of space sickness that 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.

The objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than touch down with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn he noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Eagle would likely land beyond the planned landing zone by several miles. As the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202 alarm and even with their extensive training Armstrong or Aldrin weren't aware of what this code meant. However, they promptly received word from CAPCOM in Houston that the alarms were not a concern. The 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by a processing 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. 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.

Armstrong took over manual control of the LM, found an area which to him seemed safe for a landing and touched down on the moon at 20:17:39 UTC on July 20, 1969. Some accounts of the Apollo 11 landing describe the LM's fuel situation as having been dire, with only a few seconds remaining when they touched down. 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 because of the moon's lower gravity, fuel had sloshed about in the tank more than anticipated, which led to a misleadingly low indication of the remaining propellant: At touchdown there were about 50 seconds of hovering time left.

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," which briefly confused the flight controllers in Houston because he had chosen this name himself. Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with only a handshake and pat on the back before quickly returning to the checklist of tasks which were needed in order to ready the lunar module for liftoff from the Moon should an emergency unfold during the first moments on the lunar surface.

First Moon walk
Although the official NASA flight plan called for a crew rest period before extra-vehicular activity, Armstrong requested that the EVA be moved 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. He placed his left foot on the surface at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then spoke the following words: “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Armstrong has received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, the Sylvanus Thayer Award, and the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautics Association. The lunar crater Armstrong, 50 km (31 miles) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong are named in his honor. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor and the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

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