Who Was Neil Armstrong?

Two global superpowers emerged in the wake of World War II: The United States and the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.)—two nations governed by differing economic ideologies: capitalism and communism. They competed for allies among other nations, using espionage and propaganda alongside their technological, economic, and military power. Because the United States and the Soviet Union never openly went to war with one another, this period of conflict between the two—which lasted until the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991—is referred to as the “Cold War.” Many books for younger readers have been written about this dramatic historical period. Jennifer A. Neilson’s novel A Night Divided tells the story of a family torn apart by the effects of the Cold War in Germany, for instance, and Margarita Engle’s Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings is a memoir in verse about the Cold War’s impact on Cuba.

Even though the U.S. and the Soviet Union never declared war on each other, they did fight through what are called “proxy wars” in which both nations intervened in other countries’ conflicts, fighting on opposite sides, as an indirect way to fight one another. The Korean Conflict, in which Neil Armstrong fought, was one such proxy war. Sook Nyul Choi’s Year of Impossible Goodbyes is a novel that explores this tumultuous period in Korean history. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. also engaged in an arms race. Both countries devoted enormous resources to developing powerful and advanced weapons—each time one country would achieve a breakthrough, the other would hurry to beat this achievement. This rivalry led to widespread fears that one of the two nations might suddenly decide to use their mounting stockpile of nuclear weapons against the other.

Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. wanted other nations to see them as scientifically and militarily advanced. On October 4, 1957, the U.S.S.R. launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit, introducing a new theater for the Cold War: outer space. The U.S. worried that Sputnik would give the Soviet Union a significant military advantage if open warfare ever did break out between the two countries. Many scientists worked hard behind the scenes to make discoveries that would help the U.S. in this “Space Race.” Some of these figures are profiled in Margot Lee Shetterly’s highly-regarded 2016 book Hidden Figures: Young Readers’ Edition. In 1958, the U.S. finally succeeded in launching its own satellite, Explorer. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created that same year, from the former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Neil Armstrong worked for NACA as a research scientist and pilot, so when NASA was formed, he became a part of this new agency.

The Soviet Union initially dominated the Space Race becoming the first to send a probe to the moon, the first to send a human into space, and the first to send a cosmonaut (Russian astronaut) on a spacewalk. In 1961, American President John F. Kennedy publicly declared that the United States would be the first to land a human being on the moon—and that the U.S. would accomplish this by the end of the decade. The effort took nearly nine years, but on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and “Buzz” Aldrin landed the “Eagle” on the moon, and Armstrong became the first human to step onto the lunar surface.