Up for auction “Neil Armstrong” Strand of Hair Encapsulated. This item is authenticated By Todd
Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-9028E, ES-8716E
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5,
1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut, an aeronautical engineer, and
the first person to walk on the Moon. He was
also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. Armstrong was born and
raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio. A
graduate of Purdue University, he
studied aeronautical engineering; his college tuition was paid for by the U.S. Navy under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following
year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from
the aircraft carrier USS Essex. In September 1951, while making a low
bombing run, Armstrong's aircraft was damaged when it collided with an
anti-aircraft cable, strung across a valley, which cut off a large portion of
one wing. Armstrong was forced to bail out. After the war, he completed his
bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in
California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven
times. He was also 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
the second group, which was
selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's
first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of
two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some
of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck
thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as
commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research
Vehicle moments before a crash. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and
Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM)
pilot Buzz Aldrin became
the first people to land on the Moon, and the
next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft
while Michael Collins remained
in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module Columbia.
When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said:
"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." It
was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide. Apollo 11
effectively proved US victory in the Space Race, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by
President John F. Kennedy "of
landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before
the end of the decade. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded
the Presidential Medal of
Freedom by President Richard Nixon and received the 1969 Collier Trophy. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Congressional Space Medal
of Honor in 1978, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of
Fame in 1979, and with his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in
2009. After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department
of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until
1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and
on the Rogers Commission, which
investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
In 2012, Armstrong died due to complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery,
at the age of 82.