Since the early 1980s, Armstrong

Since the early 1980s, Armstrong has been the subject of a hoax saying that he converted to Islam after hearing the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, while walking on the moon. The Indonesian singer Suhaemi wrote a song called "Gema Suara Adzan di Bulan" ("The Resonant Sound of the Call to Prayer on the Moon")HP Pavilion DV6-1105TX Battery which described Armstrong's conversion; the song was discussed widely in various Jakarta news outlets in 1983.^[128] Other similar hoax stories were seen in Egypt and Malaysia. In March 1983, the U.S. State Department responded by issuing a global message to Muslims saying that Armstrong "has not converted to Islam".HP Pavilion DV6-1106AU Battery However, the hoax was not completely quieted; it surfaced occasionally for the next three decades. A part of the confusion stems from the similarity between Armstrong's American residence in Lebanon, Ohio, and the country Lebanon which has a majority population of Muslims. Armstrong underwent bypass surgery on August 7, 2012, to relieve blocked coronary arteries. HP Pavilion DV6-1106AX Battery He died on August 25, in Cincinnati, Ohio, after complications resulting from the cardiovascular procedure. After his death, Armstrong was described, in a statement released by the White House, as "among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time";the White House statement said that Armstrong had carried the aspirations of the United States' citizens and that he had delivered "a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten." HP Pavilion DV6-1106TX Battery His family released a statement describing Armstrong as a "reluctant American hero [who had] served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut ... While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, HP Pavilion DV6-1107AU Battery to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves. For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." HP Pavilion DV6-1107AX Battery This prompted many responses, including the Twitter hashtag "#WinkAtTheMoon". Armstrong's colleague on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin, said that he was "deeply saddened by the passing. I know I am joined by millions of others in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew. HP Pavilion DV6-1107EL Battery I had truly hoped that on July 20th, 2019, Neil, Mike and I would be standing together to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of our moon landing. Regrettably, this is not to be."^[138][139] Apollo 11 Command Module pilot Michael Collins said, of Armstrong, "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly." HP Pavilion DV6-1107TX Battery NASA AdministratorCharles Bolden said that: "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own". A tribute was held in Armstrong's honor on September 13 at Washington National Cathedral, whose Space Window depicts theApollo 11 mission and holds a sliver of moon rock amid its stained-glass panels. HP Pavilion DV6-1108AU Battery In attendance were Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin; Eugene A. Cernan, the Apollo 17 mission commander and last man to walk on the moon; and former Senator and astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. In a eulogy, Charles Bolden said, "Neil will always be remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own, HP Pavilion DV6-1108AX Battery but it was the courage, grace, and humility he displayed throughout this life that lifted him above the stars." Eugene Cernan recalled Armstrong's low-fuel approach to the moon: "When the gauge says empty we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank!" Diana Krallsang the song "Fly Me to the Moon". Michael Collins led prayers. Aldrin and Collins left immediately after the event. HP Pavilion DV6-1108CA Battery TheApollo 15 commander, David Scott, spoke to the press; he recalled the Gemini 8 mission with Armstrong when he spoke, possibly for the first time, about an incident in which glue spilled on his harness and prevented it from locking correctly minutes before the hatch had to be sealed or the mission aborted. HP Pavilion DV6-1108TX Battery Armstrong then called on back-up pilot Pete Conrad to solve the problem, which he did, to continue the mission without stopping the countdown clock. "That happened because Neil Armstrong was a team player, he always worked on behalf of the team."On September 14, Armstrong's cremated remains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean during a burial-at-sea ceremony aboard the USS Philippine Sea. HP Pavilion DV6-1109AU Battery Armstrong received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, the Sylvanus Thayer Award, the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautics Association, and theCongressional Gold Medal. HP Pavilion DV6-1109AX Battery The lunar crater Armstrong, 31 mi (50 km) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong^[146] are named in his honor. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame.Armstrong and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. HP Pavilion DV6-1109TX Battery Throughout the United States, there are more than a dozen elementary, middle and high schools named in his honor,^[149] and many places around the world have streets, buildings, schools, and other places named for Armstrong and/or Apollo.In 1969, folk songwriter and singer John Stewart recorded "Armstrong", a tribute to Armstrong and his first steps on the moon. HP Pavilion DV6-1110EC Battery Purdue University announced in October 2004 that its new engineering building would be named Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering in his honor;^[151]the building cost $53.2 million and was dedicated on October 27, 2007, during a ceremony at which Armstrong was joined by fourteen other Purdue Astronauts. HP Pavilion DV6-1110EG Battery In 1971, Armstrong was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point for his service to the country.The Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum is located in his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, although it has no official ties to Armstrong and the airport in New Knoxville where he took his first flying lessons is named for him. HP Pavilion DV6-1110EH Battery Armstrong's authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was published in 2005. For many years, Armstrong turned down biography offers from authors such as Stephen Ambrose and James A. Michener, but agreed to work with James R. Hansen after reading one of Hansen's other biographies. HP Pavilion DV6-1110EJ Battery In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Armstrong was ranked as the #1 most popular space hero.^[156] The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future of spaceflight. In 2005, Armstrong said that a manned mission to Mars will be easier than the lunar challenge of the 1960s: "I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, HP Pavilion DV6-1110EL Battery they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo [space program] in 1961." In 2010, he made a rare public criticism of the decision to cancel the Ares 1 launch vehicle and the Constellation moon landing program.In an open public letter also signed by Apollo veterans Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, he noted, HP Pavilion DV6-1110EO Battery "For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature".HP Pavilion DV6-1110EQ Battery Armstrong had also publicly recalled his initial concerns about the Apollo 11 mission, when he had believed there was only a 50% chance of landing on the moon. "I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful", he later said. On November 18, 2010, at age eighty, Armstrong said in a speech during the Science & Technology Summit in The Hague, HP Pavilion DV6-1110ES Battery Netherlands, that he would offer his services as commander on a mission to Mars if he were asked. In September 2012, the U.S. Navy announced that the first Armstrong-class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) ship will be named "R/V Neil Armstrong". The ship (T-AGOR 27, HP Pavilion DV6-1110ET Battery currently under construction) will be a modern oceanographic research platform capable of supporting a wide range of oceanographic research activities conducted by academic groups. Gemini 8 (officially Gemini VIII) was the sixth manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. The mission conducted the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, but suffered the first critical in-space system failure of a U.S. HP Pavilion DV6-1110EZ Battery spacecraft which threatened the lives of the astronauts and required immediate abort of the mission. The crew was returned to Earth safely. The only other time this happened was on the flight of Apollo 13. It was the twelfth manned American flight and the twenty-second manned spaceflight of all time (including X-15 flights over 100 kilometres (62 mi)). HP Pavilion DV6-1110SS Battery Command pilot Neil Armstrong's flight marked the second time a U.S. civilian flew into space (Joseph Albert Walker became the first US civilian on X-15 Flight 90^[1][2]). Armstrong had resigned his commission in the United States Naval Reserve in 1960. The Soviet Union had launched the first civilian, Valentina Tereshkova (also the first woman) aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. HP Pavilion DV6-1110TX Battery Five months earlier, NASA had tried to launch an Agena along with Gemini 6, but the Agena blew up on launch and the Gemini launch was postponed. This time everything worked perfectly. The Agena put itself into a 298-kilometer circular orbit and oriented itself to the correct attitude for the docking. HP Pavilion DV6-1111TX Battery The Gemini spacecraft itself was launched into a 160 by 272 kilometer orbit by a modified Titan II at 10:41:02 a.m. EST. heir first burn was at 1 hour and 34 minutes into the mission, when they lowered their apogee with a 5 second burn. The second burn was at apogee of the second orbit. HP Pavilion DV6-1112TX Battery This time they raised their perigee by adding 15 meters per second to their speed. Their third burn made sure that they were in the same orbital plane. This time they were turned 90° from their direction of travel and made a burn of 8 meters per second while they were over the Pacific. HP Pavilion DV6-1113TX Battery They then had to make an 0.8 meter per second burn after the ground controller realised that they were slightly off due to problems with the thrusters not shutting off properly. They found at 332 kilometres (206 mi) from the Agena that the radar had acquired the target. At 3 hours, 48 minutes and 10 seconds into the mission they performed another burn that put them in a circular orbit 28 kilometres (17 mi) below the Agena. HP Pavilion DV6-1114TX Battery They first sighted it when they were 140 kilometres (87 mi) away and at 102 kilometres (63 mi) they turned the computer onto automatic. After several small burns they were 46 meters away and with no relative velocity. After 30 minutes of visually inspecting the Agena to make sure that it had not been damaged by the launch, they were given the go for docking. HP Pavilion DV6-1115EE Battery Armstrong started slowly (8 centimeters per second) to move towards the Agena. In a matter of minutes, the Agena's docking latches clicked and a green light indicated that the docking had been successfully completed. "Flight, we are docked! Yes, it's really a smoothie," Scott radioed to the ground. HP Pavilion DV6-1115EI Battery There was some suspicion on the ground that the Agena attitude system was acting up and might not have the correct program stored in it (this suspicion was subsequently found to be incorrect). Just before they went off contact with the ground, the crew of Gemini 8 were informed that if anything strange were to happen, they were to turn off the Agena. HP Pavilion DV6-1115ES Battery After the Agena began execution of its stored command program, which instructed the Agena to turn the combined spacecraft 90° to the right, Scott noticed that they were in a roll. Armstrong used the Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS) to stop the roll, but the moment he stopped using the thrusters, it started again. HP Pavilion DV6-1115ET Battery They immediately turned off the Agena and this seemed to stop the problem for a few minutes. Then suddenly it started again. Scott noticed that the Gemini attitude fuel had dropped to 30% indicating that it was a problem on their own spacecraft. They would have to undock. HP Pavilion DV6-1115EZ Battery After transferring control of the Agena back to the ground they undocked and with a long burst of translation thrusters moved away from the Agena. It was at that point that the Gemini spacecraft began to roll even faster, and approached one revolution per second. HP Pavilion DV6-1115TX Battery The astronauts were now in danger of impaired vision and loss of consciousness due to the violent motion. At this point Armstrong shut down the OAMS and used the Re-entry Control System reaction control system (RCS) to stop the spin. After steadying the spacecraft, they tested each OAMS thruster in turn and found that Number 8 had stuck on. HP Pavilion DV6-1116EL Battery Mission rules dictated that the flight be terminated once the RCS had been fired for any reason, so Gemini VIII prepared for an emergency landing. It was decided to let the spacecraft reenter one orbit later so that it could land in a place that could be reached by the secondary recovery forces. HP Pavilion DV6-1116TX Battery The original plan was for Gemini 8 to land in the Atlantic, but that was supposed to be three days later. So USS Leonard F. Mason started to steam towards the new landing site 800 kilometers east of Okinawa and 1,000 kilometers south of Yokosuka, Japan. Most of the reentry occurred over Asia, beyond the range of NASA tracking stations. HP Pavilion DV6-1117EL Battery Planes were also dispatched and the pilot of one (Captain Les Schneider, USAF), managed to see the spacecraft as it descended precisely on time and target. Three pararescuers jumped from the plane and attached the flotation collar to the capsule. The three pararescuers (Air Force PJs) were A/2C Glenn M. Moore; HP Pavilion DV6-1117ES Battery A/1C Eldridge M. Neal; and S/Sgt Larry D. Huyett.^[5] Three hours after splashdown, the Mason had the spacecraft on board.Had Gemini 8 landed in the western Atlantic Ocean (the scheduled recovery area) as planned, it would have been recovered by the U.S. Navy Atlantic Recovery Fleet's prime recovery ship, the carrier USS Boxer. HP Pavilion DV6-1117TX Battery During this time the Wasp (the usual Atlantic Fleet Gemini recovery carrier) was in dry dock for repairs. For several days after the Gemini reentry, the Agena vehicle was tested by a variety of maneuvers initiated by NASA ground control in Houston until its fuel and power were exhausted. HP Pavilion DV6-1118EL Battery The Gemini 8 mission was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense with 9,655 personnel, 96 aircraft, and 16 ships. Gemini 8's troubles became apparent just as the major television networks in the United States (and Canada) were about to begin prime-time programming on the East Coast. HP Pavilion DV6-1118TX Battery CBS went on the air first, just before 7:30 P.M. EST and remained on the air continuously until after splashdown; ABC interrupted Batman (airing from 7:30 to 8 P.M. EST) with bulletins before cutting the program off; and NBC cut-off The Virginian shortly after 7:30. All three networks stayed on the air until the spacecraft had splashed down and the astronauts were safe. HP Pavilion DV6-1119EL Battery In Canada, NHL On CTV broke into coverage of an National Hockey League game between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs several times to report on the crisis, and once the game ended, simulcast CBS News coverage of the crisis, joining just prior to re-entry and splashdown. HP Pavilion DV6-1119TX Battery All four of these networks (especially CBS, ABC, CTV) received angry calls from viewers missing their favorite shows, but the biggest irony was that CBS had pre-empted a fictional space adventure series, Lost In Space, to cover the real-life space emergency. No conclusive reason for the thruster malfunction was found. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EC Battery The most probable cause was determined to be an electrical short, most likely due to a static electricity discharge. Power still flowed to the thruster, even when it was switched off. To prevent recurrence of this problem, spacecraft designs were changed so each thruster would have an isolated circuit. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EF Battery The Deputy Administrator of NASA, Dr. Robert Seamans, was attending a celebratory dinner sponsored by the Goddard Space Flight Center, at which Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the guest speaker, when the problem arose. The incident inspired Seamans to review NASA's problem investigation procedures, modeled after military crash investigations, HP Pavilion DV6-1120EG Battery and on April 14, 1966, to formalize a new procedure in Management Instruction 8621.1, Mission Failure Investigation Policy And Procedures. This gave the Deputy Administrator the option of performing independent investigations of major failures, beyond those failure investigations for which the various Program Office officials were normally responsible. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EH Battery It declared: "It is NASA policy to investigate and document the causes of all major mission failures which occur in the conduct of its space and aeronautical activities and to take appropriate corrective actions as a result of the findings and recommendations."Seamans first invoked this new procedure immediately following the fatal Apollo 1 spacecraft fire on January 27, 1967. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EI Battery It was also invoked after the next critical in-flight failure, which occurred on the Apollo 13 lunar mission in April 1970.McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the Gemini spacecraft prime contractor, also changed its procedures. Prior to the accident, McDonnell's top engineers would be at Cape Kennedy for the launch, then fly to Mission Control in Houston, Texas for the rest of the mission. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EJ Battery The problem occurred while they were en route, so it was decided to keep McDonnell engineers in Houston for the entire mission. The flight patch for the mission shows the whole spectrum of objectives that were hoped to have been accomplished on Gemini 8. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EK Battery The text at the bottom is composed of the zodiacal symbol for Gemini,  , and the Roman numeral for eight, VIII. The two stars are Castor and Pollux, which are in the constellation of Gemini, and are refracted through a prism to provide the spectrum. Armstrong and Scott both designed the flight patch. HP Pavilion DV6-1120EL Battery,HP Pavilion DV6-1120EO Battery, HP Pavilion DV6-1120EQ Battery