Buzz Aldrin! The Apollo 11 Moonwalker turns 83 Today
United States: The second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin turned 83yrs of age today. He was the second, after Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, to ever walk on the surface of the moon in 1969.
He has helped in the launch of AXE Space Academy, which is the spaceflight competition aimed at launching 22 people on suborbital spaceflights. A deal with the space tourism company Space Expedition Curacao and XCOR Aerospace and known to be the one building the Lynx Space planes that will be used in the flights.
He is known for his role on NASA’s APOLLO 11 mission that made the first moon landing on July 20, 1969. This is where Armstrong, who died at 82, last year, landed and performed the first moonwalk.
He served as lunar module pilot for Apollo 11 mission. He is also a retired colonel in the US Air Force, flew combat missions in Korea then joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1963. His real name is Edwin Aldrin but Buzz was a nickname in Montclair, N.J., where he earned a Ph.D. in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Together with astronaut James Lovell, they tested the space walk methods on their first mission, Gemini 12, launched on Nov. 11, 1966. The final mission for the Gemini program which then allowed the space agency to proceed with the Apollo missions that saw Aldrin sent to the moon.
It was Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins who launched their Apollo 11 mission on July 16, 1969. Aldrin and Armstrong spent two hours and 15 minutes walking on the lunar surface on the moon. The then returned to the Earth on July 24, 1969, and five successful moon landings followed. He left NASA in 1971, retired from Air force having logged 289 hours and 53 minutes in space. He has since then loved the space explorations and has written several books including two biographies, and television appearances.
Earlier this year, we saw Aldrin settle divorce with his 23 years wife, Lois Driggs Cannon citing “irreconcilable differences.”
