Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, in 1969, became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
Buzz Aldrin is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, and was the Lunar Module Eagle pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. He was the second person to walk on the Moon after mission commander Neil Armstrong. Following the death of Michael Collins in 2021, he is the last surviving Apollo 11 crew member.
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research. AFRC operates some of the most advanced aircraft in the world and is known for many aviation firsts, including supporting the first crewed airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, highest speed by a crewed, powered aircraft, the first pure digital fly-by-wire aircraft, and many others. AFRC operates a second site next to Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, known as Building 703, once the former Rockwell International/North American Aviation production facility. There, AFRC houses and operates several of NASA's Science Mission Directorate aircraft including SOFIA, a DC-8 Flying Laboratory, a Gulfstream C-20A UAVSAR and ER-2 High Altitude Platform. As of 2023, Bradley Flick is the center's director.
The Langley Research Center, located in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also tested space hardware such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site. Langley was also considered a potential site for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston, Texas.
Stephen Kern "Steve" Robinson is an American former NASA astronaut.
Robert T. Jones,, was an American aerodynamicist and aeronautical engineer for NACA and later NASA. He was known at NASA as "one of the premier aeronautical engineers of the twentieth century".
NASA Astronaut Group 2 was the second group of astronauts selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Their selection was announced on September 17, 1962. The group augmented the Mercury Seven. President John F. Kennedy had announced Project Apollo, on May 25, 1961, with the ambitious goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and more astronauts were required to fly the two-man Gemini spacecraft and three-man Apollo spacecraft then under development. The Mercury Seven had been selected to accomplish the simpler task of orbital flight, but the new challenges of space rendezvous and lunar landing led to the selection of candidates with advanced engineering degrees as well as test pilot experience.
Hugh Latimer Dryden was an American aeronautical scientist and civil servant. He served as NASA Deputy Administrator from August 19, 1958, until his death.
John Cornelius Houbolt was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using the rocket and spacecraft technologies.
First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong is the authorised biography of Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who became the first human to walk on the Moon, on July 20, 1969. The book was written by James R. Hansen and was first published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster. The book describes Armstrong's involvement in the United States space program, and details his personal life and upbringing.
The Variable Density Tunnel (VDT) was the second wind tunnel at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Research Center. Proposed by German aerospace engineer, Max Munk, student of Ludwig Prandtl, it was the world's first variable density wind tunnel and allowed for more accurate testing of small-scale models than could be obtained with atmospheric wind tunnels.
The Eugene M. Emme Award is an award given annually to a person or persons selected by a panel of reviewers from the American Astronautical Society History Committee to recognize "the truly outstanding book published each year serving public understanding about the positive impact of astronautics upon society." The award is in honor of Eugene M. Emme, NASA's first historian.
Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is similar, but deals with the electronics side of aerospace engineering.
The Projection Planetarium was a training device housed in the Flight Research Laboratory hangar at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. It consisted of a custom designed star projector surrounded by a 40 feet (12 m) diameter sphere constructed from a surplus 53 feet (16 m) radome. The star projector was movable in 3 directions while the capsule mockup and its pilots remained static. The system was used in studies of manual control of spacecraft using "out the window" visual information both in orbit and in a launch abort scenario. The planetarium was constructed in 1965 at a cost of $153,103 for research and development and $177,000 for construction and materials. An additional $145,400 worth of surplus materials were made use of in the project.
Paul Richard Hill (1909–1990) was a mid–twentieth-century American aerodynamicist. He was a leading research and development engineer and manager for NASA and its predecessor, NACA between 1939 and 1970, retiring as Associate Chief, Applied Materials and Physics Division at the NASA Langley Research Center. He is arguably most widely known today as the author of Unconventional Flying Objects: a Scientific Analysis.
Walter Charles Williams was an American engineer, leader of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) group at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1940s and 1950s, and a NASA deputy associate administrator during Project Mercury.
Mary Jackson was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. In 1958, after taking engineering classes, she became NASA's first black female engineer.
The Propeller Research Tunnel (PRT) was the first full-scale wind tunnel at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Research Center, and the third at the facility. It was in use between 1927 and 1950 and was instrumental in the drag reduction research of early American aeronautics. In 1929, NACA was awarded its first Collier Trophy for the NACA cowling which was tested and developed using the Propeller Research Tunnel.
The Personal Preference Kit (PPK) is a container used to carry the personal items of astronauts during the Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, and International Space Station programs. Items that astronauts choose to carry into space are approved by NASA management and stored in PPKs. Information on the contents of kits are usually kept private by the astronaut, although some contents have been put on display or given as awards to contributors to space programs.
Sigurd Arnold Sjoberg was the deputy director for the Manned Spacecraft Center from 1972 to 1979. Before his deputy director tenure, Sjoberg started his space career in 1942 with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. As a member of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory until the end of the 1950s, Sjoberg worked in aerodynamics and primarily conducted research. For his flight operations career, Sjoberg joined the Langley Research Center and Space Task Group in 1959.
