Neil Armstrong, Expert Pilot

Most of us know Neil Armstrong as the first man to step foot on the moon. Rightly so, but lost in all this is the fact that Armstrong was also a truly awesome pilot.
During Armstrong and Dave Scott’s Gemini VIII mission, the spacecraft malfunctioned and set itself into a roll (starting around 19’00″ in the video above), with a rate approaching 60 RPM (1 revolution every second). At roll rates such as this the danger of humans blacking out becomes very real. Armstrong, as the Command Pilot, kept his cool and managed to stop the roll by activating the Reaction Control System, and then orienting the Gemini craft for a perfect emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean.
When I say perfect, I mean perfect. The craft came down exactly where it was supposed to be, and exactly whenit was supposed to be there. Between RCS activation and re-entry, Gemini 8 completed another whole orbit around the Earth with Armstrong at the controls. He then had to manually pilot the capsule into re-entry attitude at just the right moment in order to land in the right spot.
By his actions on Gemini 8, Neil Armstrong may have single-handedly saved the space program. The loss of two astronauts in orbit would have meant months- or perhaps years-long delays while investigations and design revisions were worked out. We may never have gone to the moon, and the course of manned spaceflight would have been changed forever.
Thank goodness for Neil Armstrong.

Source: Adafruit 

Neil Armstrong dies at 82

"It's a story that we hoped we'd never have to report. Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on Earth's Moon, has died at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery three weeks earlier. His greatest accomplishment very nearly speaks for itself -- along with help from fellow NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, he changed the landscape of space exploration through a set of footprints. It's still important to stress his accomplishments both before and after the historic Apollo 11 flight, though. He was instrumental to the Gemini and X-series test programs in the years before Apollo, and followed his moonshot with roles in teaching aerospace engineering as well as investigating the Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle Challenger incidents. What more can we say? Although he only spent a very small portion of his life beyond Earth's atmosphere, he's still widely considered the greatest space hero in the US, if not the world, and inspired a whole generation of astronauts. We'll miss him."

Source: NBC
VIA: Engadget

Curiosity Rover has landed!

It once was one small step... now it's six big wheels. Here's a look at one of them on the soil of Mars #MSL http://t.co/uzO99NZz -- Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity)