Claim: Neil Armstrong, on two separate occasions, left Earth's atmosphere.

Neil Alden Armstrong -LRB- August 5 , 1930 -- August 25 , 2012 -RRB- was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon . He was also an aerospace engineer , naval aviator , test pilot , and university professor . Before becoming an astronaut , Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War . After the war , he earned his bachelor 's degree at Purdue University and served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics -LRB- NACA -RRB- High-Speed Flight Station , where he logged over 900 flights . He later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California .   A participant in the U.S. Air Force 's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs , Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962 . He made his first space flight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966 , becoming NASA 's first civilian astronaut to fly in space . He performed the first docking of two spacecraft , with pilot David Scott . This mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his reentry control fuel to prevent a dangerous spin caused by a stuck thruster , in the first in-flight space emergency .   Armstrong 's second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11 , the first manned Moon landing mission in July 1969 . Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft , while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module . Along with Collins and Aldrin , Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon . President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978 . Armstrong and his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 .   Armstrong died in Cincinnati , Ohio on August 25 , 2012 , at the age of 82 , after complications from coronary artery bypass surgery .