Space
Buzz Aldrin
Apollo 11 astronaut, second person to walk on the Moon
Born 1930
Photo: NASA · Public domain
«Magnificent desolation.»
Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on 21 July 1969, minutes after Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission. A fighter pilot in Korea and then a doctor of science from MIT, he worked out the rendezvous techniques that let two spacecraft meet in orbit, the foundation of the Moon landing plan.
Key achievements
- Second person to walk on the Moon, Apollo 11, 1969
- Doctorate in orbital mechanics used by every docking mission since
Universities
Cambridge, Massachusetts
ScD in astronautics, 1963; his thesis on piloted orbital rendezvous was applied in the Gemini and Apollo programmes.
Facts
- His MIT thesis, Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, was dedicated to the astronauts of the future; colleagues nicknamed him Dr Rendezvous.
- He graduated third in his class at West Point in 1951 and flew 66 combat missions in the Korean War before joining NASA in 1963 as its first astronaut with a doctorate.
- On Gemini 12 in 1966 he spent more than five hours outside the spacecraft, proving that useful work in a spacesuit was possible.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.