How old would Neil Armstrong be today?

Neil Alden Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, in the US state of Ohio. He died on August 25, 2012, at age 82, from complications following a cardiac procedure, just weeks after the surgery. Had he lived, he would have turned 96 on August 5, 2026. The question about his current age is usually based on the assumption that the first man on the Moon would still be alive; in reality, he didn't even live to see the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.

Armstrong's career as an astronaut comprised only two flights, totaling eight days and 14 hours in space. In March 1966 he commanded Gemini 8 with David Scott as pilot; that mission achieved the first docking maneuver between two vehicles in Earth orbit, before a stuck control thruster forced the mission to be aborted. On July 20, 1969, as commander of Apollo 11, he landed on the Moon and worked on the surface for two hours and 14 minutes.

Most of his biography takes place after the flight. Armstrong left NASA, taught aerospace engineering at a university, worked on committees and in companies, and rarely appeared in public, partly because he understood fame as the result of collective work and avoided the role of symbol. He spoke out publicly mainly on technical matters or the future of the space program. That's why anyone calculating his age today is doing so against a career that faded from the spotlight long before his death.