Neil Armstrong was in charge of a space mission.
Neil Armstrong . 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 . Armstrong 's second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11 , the first manned Moon landing mission in July 1969 .