Neil Armstrong (1930-2012): the Eagle has flown

Few events have marked history quite so deeply. On 20 July 1969, Neil Alden Armstrong manually landed the Eagle lunar module on the surface of the Sea of Tranquility. His Olympian calm and the precision of his piloting prevented a calamity when he changed the course of the module in order to avoid an area dotted with rocks that could have damaged it or caused it to tip over, which would have brought the Apollo 11 mission, history’s first manned lunar landing, to a tragic ending.

Once the lunar module was on the Moon, he simply announced: “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed”.

Neil Armstrong on the Moon, aboard the Eagle module.Credit: NASA.

But this was not this native of Ohio’s first attempt. A former pilot during the Korean War, he joined NACA (NASA’s ancestor dedicated to aeronautical research) in 1955 as a test pilot, which resulted in his taking the controls of experimental rocket planes such as the Bell X-1B and, above all, the fabulous North American X-15, aboard which he reached an altitude of 63 km, and a speed of 6,615 km/h. He was also chosen as a pilot for the X-20 Dyna Soar space plane programme that was eventually abandoned. In 1962, he was part of NASA’s second selection of astronauts, the “New Nine”.

He was at the controls of the Gemini 8 capsule, with Dave Scott at his side, for his first space flight on 16 March 1966. On this occasion he performed history’s first piloted docking (with a modified Agena stage), before having to return the capsule to Earth under emergency conditions following the breakdown of an attitude control motor which caused the capsule to act like a spinning top. Although the violent gravity generated by this threatened both astronauts with a loss of consciousness, he remained calm and managed to regain control, transforming what was nearly the first calamity of the human space flight programme into a resounding success.

Several hours after he had landed the Eagle, Neil Armstrong, closely followed by Buzz Aldrin, was the first man to leave the imprint of his boots in the dust on the lunar soil. Ten other astronauts were to follow his example through to 1972.

Having become an icon worldwide, this modest man made a minimum of public appearances in order to devote himself predominantly to his job as Professor of aerospace engineering at Cincinnati University. He nevertheless took part in NASA’s inquiry commissions following the Apollo 13 mission accident in 1970 and the later in-flight destruction of space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

For the Apollo 11 mission’s 40th anniversary in 2009, he agreed to answer two questions for the Cité de l’Espace.

Of the 12 astronauts that walked on the Moon, Neil Armstrong is the fourth, after James Irwin (Apollo 15) in 1991, Alan Shepard (Apollo 14) in 1998 and Pete Conrad (Apollo 12), to pass away.

Published on 26 August 2012.