Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, died on Saturday.

Neil Armstrong is dead at 82. Cause of death for Neil Armstrong is listed as complications from recent heart operations, officials indicate Saturday.

Mr Armstrong and David R. Scott arrive at Complex 19 for a simulated test in preparation for flight in 1966.

Armstrong's unlikely path to the moon began in Wapakoneta, Ohio, where his fascination with flying led him to work at a nearby airport when he was a teenager. He received his pilot's licence on his 16th birthday and went on to study aeronautical engineering.

As a US Naval Aviator, he flew 78 missions in the Korean War and later piloted more than 200 different models of pioneering aircraft as a test pilot.

He became an astronaut in 1962 and always modestly attributed his status as first man on the moon to chance.

"I wasn't chosen to be first," he said "I was just chosen to command that flight."

But Nasa had chosen him for good reason. When Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar module, made its perilous descent to the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, it was the extraordinary skill of Armstrong, then aged 38, that averted disaster.

As the tiny craft skated over lethal boulder fields and steep-walled craters, its fuel tanks emptying, Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin realised they were miles from the planned landing spot.

Without breaking a sweat, Armstrong found a flattish patch of ground and put them down with only seconds of fuel left.

Armstrong also maintained to the end that his famous first words from the moon were misquoted.

Hundreds of millions of people on Earth heard him say "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," but the astronaut said he had spoken the words "a man."

Decades later, in 2006, a computer analysis found evidence that he was right, and the world was wrong. Nasa backed its hero, saying: "If Neil Armstrong says there was an 'a,' then as far as we're concerned, there was an 'a'."

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