As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission, Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first man to land a craft on the moon and first to step on its surface.
Neil Armstrong first served as a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952, before joining the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1955. Over the next 17 years, he was an engineer, test pilot, astronaut and administrator for NACA and its successor agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He has flown over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders. After transferring to astronaut status in 1962, he was assigned as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission that launched in 1966, and Armstrong performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space. As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission, Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first man to land a craft on the moon and first to step on its surface.