Neil Armstrong's birthday: Rare unseen pics of the first man to set foot on Moon

Today is the 91st birth anniversary of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the Moon, and in his honour, here are some rare pictures of the astronaut. 

(Image: NASA)

Early life of Neil Armstrong

Born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong is remembered as the one who earned humanity an everlasting honour. He was an aeronautical engineer from Purdue University and an aerospace engineer from the University of Southern California. He even served as a naval aviator between 1949 and 1952 and flew 78 combat missions during the Korean war. 

(Image: @spaceanswers/Twitter)

In 1955, Armstrong then joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which was later renamed as NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. He flew more than 1,100 hours, testing various supersonic fighters as well as the X-15rocket plane. Then in 1962, Armstrong joined the space program with its second group of astronauts. 

(Image: NASA/Lee Jones)

On July 16, 1969, Armstrong, along with Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, blasted off in the Apollo 11vehicle toward the Moon. four days later, the Eagle lunar landing module, guided manually by Armstrong, touched down on a plain near the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquillity. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped from the Eagle onto the Moon’s dusty surface with the words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”. 

(Image: @berniceh59/Twitter)

Armstrong and Aldrin left the module for more than two hours and deployed scientific instruments, collected surface samples, and took numerous photographs. After 21 hours and 36 minutes on the Moon, they lifted off to rendezvous with Collins and begin the voyage back to Earth. The team was hailed for their part in the opening of a new era in the human exploration of the universe. 

(Image: NASA)

Armstrong resigned from NASA in 1971. He confined himself to academic and professional endeavours. From 1971 to 1979 he was professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). After 1979 Armstrong served as chairman or director for a number of companies, among them Computing Technologies for Aviation from 1982 to 1992 and AIL Systems. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. He died on August 25, 2012, in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

(Image: NASA)