“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” – Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong had flying in the blood one might say. Born in Ohio on 5 August 1930, Neil Armstrong attended his first aviation event at the Cleveland air races at the ripe old age of only two. By the age of six, he had taken his first ride in a plane when he and his father flew in a Ford Trimotor in Warren, Ohio. During high school he started to take flying lessons, getting his flight certificate on his sixteenth birthday which was before he even got his driver’s license.

However, this was not the only area in which Neil Armstrong excelled, as he also demonstrated exemplary leadership, character, and academic prowess by achieving the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts, even being awarded a Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He studied Aeronautical Engineering at Purdue, the university he had chosen to attend, even though he had been accepted into MIT.

Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong is famous for being the first man to step foot on the moon, but he achieved much more than that before he even joined NASA.

He was a naval officer and flew missions in the Korean War while stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Essex flying the Grumman F9F Panther. Despite his extreme flying proficiency and his love for his chosen vocation, his plane was taken down by an anti-aircraft cable during a low-level bombing mission in 1951. The cable sliced off a large section of the wing and although Neil Armstrong managed to get the aircraft back into friendly territory, he was forced to eject and was picked up by his flight school roommate in his jeep. In total, he flew 78 missions over Korea with his last one being on 5 March 1952.

After the Korean War, he went back to Purdue to finish his degree and during this time he met Janet Elizabeth Shearon and the couple were married on 28 January 1956. They went on to have three children together: Eric, Karen, and Mark, although unfortunately, Karen was soon diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour and died at the age of two. Following a marriage that lasted 38 years, Neil and Janet divorced in 1994 having been separated since 1990. Neil would meet his second wife Carol in 1992. They married on 12 June 1994.

During his time at college, Neil Armstrong was never far away from aviation and became president of the Purdue flying club. Following his graduation, he became a test pilot with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at Edwards Air Force Base, reporting for duty on 11 July 1955.

During his time there Armstrong piloted a number of different aircraft types including the North American F-100 Super Sabre, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, and the Boeing B-29 Superfortress among others. Having piloted multi-engined propeller-driven aircraft as well as fast jets, he also flew the rocket-powered aircraft, the Bell X-1B and the North American X-15, which he flew seven times reaching speeds of up to 6420 km/h or Mach 5.74.

In June 1958 Neil Armstrong began participating in the US Air Force Man in Space Soonest program which was soon replaced by Project Mercury, a civilian program run by NASA. The goal was to try to find smart, capable, and accomplished pilots who possessed the necessary attributes to enable them to become astronauts.

Although Neil Armstrong was not part of the first group selected by NASA for the astronaut corps, he was quickly picked up in the second group which was selected in 1962 for a new project called Gemini with Armstrong being selected as commander of Gemini 8 thus becoming the first civilian in space as he had resigned his Air Force commission on 21 October 1960.