Buzz Aldrin broke barriers in 1969 by walking on the moon
Buzz Aldrin, a former air force colonel, and another astronaut took flight in an F-16 on April 2, 2017. The Thunderbirds of the Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron participated in the fly-by over Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In addition to becoming the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11, Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. also served as a US Air Force (USAF) fighter pilot during the Korean War. Using an F-86 Sabre, he completed 66 combat missions and downed two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 aircraft. On June 8, 1953, Life magazine published images taken by Aldrin using a gun camera of a Soviet pilot jumping from his damaged aircraft.
Aldrin served as an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), Nevada, after the war. He then worked as an assistant to the dean of faculty at the USAF Academy, which had just started operations in 1955. He earned his Squadron Officer School degree at Alabama’s Maxwell AFB in the same year.
As a flight commander with the 22d Fighter Squadron at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany, he piloted F-100 Super Sabres (FS). In October 1963, Aldrin was chosen to be a part of the third group of NASA astronauts.
On Gemini 12, the final Gemini mission, he was a pilot and set a record for extravehicular activity (EVA), proving that astronauts could perform tasks outside of spacecraft.
Aldrin broke down barriers in 1969 and, after Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, became the second person to walk on the moon at 03:15:16 on July 21, 1969 (UTC).
Photo by U.S. Air Force