He played football and was the starting center for Montclair High School's undefeated 1946 state champion team. Īldrin did well in school, maintaining an A average. He was a Boy Scout, achieving the rank of Tenderfoot Scout. His nickname, which became his legal first name in 1988, arose as a result of Fay's mispronouncing 'brother' as 'buzzer', which was then shortened to 'Buzz'. Aldrin had two sisters: Madeleine, who was four years older, and Fay Ann, who was a year and a half older. His father was an Army aviator during World War I and the assistant commandant of the Army's test pilot school at McCook Field, Ohio, from 1919 to 1922, but left the Army in 1928 and became an executive at Standard Oil. and Marion Aldrin ( née Moon), lived in neighboring Montclair. on January 20, 1930, at Mountainside Hospital in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He has been accorded numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.Īldrin was born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. He developed the Aldrin cycler, a special spacecraft trajectory that makes travel to Mars more efficient in terms of time and propellant. Aldrin continues to advocate for space exploration, particularly a human mission to Mars. His autobiographies Return to Earth (1973) and Magnificent Desolation (2009) recount his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years after leaving NASA. He retired from the Air Force in 1972 after 21 years of service. A Presbyterian elder, Aldrin became the first person to hold a religious ceremony on the Moon when he privately took communion.Īfter leaving NASA in 1971, Aldrin became Commandant of the U.S. Three years later, Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on J( UTC), nineteen minutes after Armstrong first touched the surface, while command module pilot Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. His first space flight was in 1966 on Gemini 12, during which he spent over five hours on extravehicular activity. His doctoral thesis, Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, earned him the nickname 'Dr.

He flew 66 combat missions and shot down two MiG-15 aircraft.Īfter earning a Doctor of Science degree in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Aldrin was selected as a member of NASA's Astronaut Group 3, making him the first astronaut with a doctoral degree. He was commissioned into the United States Air Force and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. He was the Lunar Module Eagle pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and became the second person to walk on the Moon after mission commander Neil Armstrong.īorn in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Aldrin graduated third in the class of 1951 from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a degree in mechanical engineering. He made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission. January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. Buzz Aldrin ( / ˈ ɔː l d r ɪ n/ born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.

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