(Image credit: Getty)Īlthough Apollo 8 didn't see him venture into space, Aldrin's time would come with Apollo 11 which launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969. The Apollo 11 crew (left to right): Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. Aldrin became part of the back-up crew for Apollo 8, according to NASA, having been assigned as the command module pilot, and he worked with commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Fred W Haise Jr. It was a three-person spacecraft as opposed to the two-person Gemini project and its primary aim was to land astronauts on the moon. NASA also set up the Apollo space program.
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According to NASA’s Space Science Data and Coordinated Archive (opens in new tab), underwater training paved the way for Aldrin to perform three successful spacewalks, Extra-Vehicular Activities that saw him spend more than five-and-a-half hours outside a spacecraft. Along with fellow astronaut Jim Lovell, he'd been assigned to the tenth and final flight of the Gemini series, Gemini 12, which launched on Nov. In 1966, Environmental Research Associates paid McDonogh - a private military boys' school in Maryland - $10 an hour to rent its pool and Aldrin plunged in for underwater exercises, according to McDonogh (opens in new tab). Becoming known as Dr Rendezvous, Aldrin also pioneered underwater training techniques to simulate spacewalking which would prepare astronauts to work in a weightlessness environment, according to NASA. To aid such a mission, Aldrin built on the knowledge gained during his thesis and worked on docking and rendezvous techniques for spacecraft in Earth and lunar orbit. That year, president John F Kennedy announced his intention to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth, according to NASA (opens in new tab). It saw both sides embroiled in a competition to demonstrate their respective technological might and, in 1961, the USSR stole a march yet again when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space.īuzz Aldrin embarked on three spacewalks during the Gemini 12 spaceflight on November 12, 13 totaling 5½ hours. In that year, the president Dwight D Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty announced America's intention to launch a science satellite and this spurred the Soviets into action, according to NASA History Division (opens in new tab) - the USSR's Sputnik 1 satellite was sent into space just two years later, according to (opens in new tab). Since 1955, the United States and the Soviet Union had been engaged in a space race.
It was the second time he had applied, having been inspired by his friend, Gemini and Apollo astronaut Ed White, Aldrin stated in a tweet (opens in new tab) in March 2020. Shortly after graduating four years later, having written a 311-page thesis called Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (opens in new tab), he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut. He was intrigued by science fiction - Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in particular - but he didn't look towards the night sky with a great desire to explore, Aldrin said in an interview in 1988 (opens in new tab).
During his childhood, however, he didn't display any great interest in space. He was actually named Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., after his father (the US Army aviator and officer Edwin Eugene Aldrin Sr) but when one of the youngster's two elder sisters, Fay Ann, began mispronouncing "brother" as "buzzer" the nickname, shortened to Buzz, soon stuck according to (opens in new tab).Īll of his family including mother Marion and eldest sister Madeleine called him Buzz and he liked it so much he used it himself, finally making it his legal first name in 1988, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica (opens in new tab). Buzz Aldrin was born in the United States on Januin Montclair, New Jersey, according to Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA (opens in new tab).