“I knew Neil Armstrong. I had a young daughter and she took her first step on the day that Neil stepped foot on the Moon. Isn’t that something?”
Hank Cole did research on the design of the Saturn V rocket, which propelled humans to the Moon. An engineer, his work at Ames often took him to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, where he met Neil Armstrong and other pilots who tested experimental aircraft.
On July 20, 1969, the world watched as Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the Moon. It was a historic moment for the United States and for humanity. Until then, no human had ever walked on another world. To achieve this remarkable feat, we recruited the best and brightest scientists, engineers and mathematicians across the country. At the peak of our Apollo program, an estimated 400,000 Americans worked to realize President John F. Kennedy’s vision of landing humans on the Moon and bringing them safely back to Earth. The men and women of our Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley supported the Apollo program in numerous ways – from devising the shape of the Apollo space capsule to performing tests on its thermal protection system and study of the Moon rocks and soils collected by the astronauts. In celebration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, our new portrait series, “Faces of Apollo,” highlights some of the amazing people who worked at Ames in the 1960s to help make the Apollo program a success.