Armstrong donates papers to university

Source: Agencies  |   2008-11-2  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

NEIL Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, has agreed to donate personal papers dating from the start of his flight career to his alma mater, Purdue University in Indiana.

Former astronaut Armstrong's papers, boxes of which have already begun arriving at Purdue, will be an inspiration for students and invaluable for researchers, said a university spokesman for the archives collection.

"For researchers, it's going to be a boon. No one has been able to research these papers or study them," said Sammie Morris, assistant professor of library science and head of Purdue Libraries' Archives and Special Collections.

Armstrong's donation is planned to be announced this weekend before the Purdue-Michigan football game by Purdue President France A. Cordova, who became NASA's first female chief scientist.

She also plans to use that event to announce that James R. Hansen, author of the 2005 book "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong," is donating 55 hours of one-on-one recorded interviews with Armstrong.

The papers and Hansen's interviews will be a starting point for Purdue's effort to build a comprehensive flight collection. They'll be housed with papers and artifacts related to aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

Armstrong graduated from Purdue in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering, after serving as a US Navy pilot in the Korean War. He became an astronaut in 1962.

On July 20, 1969, he maneuvered the Apollo 11 landing module past a region of the moon littered with boulders to touchdown with 30 seconds of fuel remaining.