Neil Armstrong was born in 1970.
Buzz Aldrin . He set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on July 21 , 1969 ( UTC ) , following mission commander Neil Armstrong . The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics ( NACA ) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3 , 1915 , to undertake , promote , and institutionalize aeronautical research . Neil Alden Armstrong ( August 5 , 1930 -- August 25 , 2012 ) was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon . 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 . 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 .