Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the Moon. He stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, after descending from the lunar module Eagle at the Sea of Tranquility.

Armstrong was Apollo 11’s commander, while Buzz Aldrin served as lunar-module pilot and Michael Collins operated the command module Columbia in lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the surface, while Collins remained above the Moon and never walked on it.

Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was a naval aviator, engineer, test pilot, and one of the pilots who flew NASA’s X-15 rocket plane. He had already reached space on Gemini 8 in 1966, when he and David Scott performed the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit.

The usual confusion is with Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person to step onto the Moon and the second of the two Apollo 11 astronauts to walk there. Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, and John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth.