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Astronaut Neil Armstrong

Astronaut Neil Armstrong exhibit on view at Purdue

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
Astronaut Neil Armstrong
Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing mission in 1969. NASA image

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) – An exhibit of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s personal papers is opening at Purdue University ahead of the 50th anniversary of his famed walk on the moon.

“Apollo 11 in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers” opens today at Purdue’s Humanities, Social Science and Education Library and runs until Aug. 16.

Purdue is home to hundreds of thousands of personal documents, memorabilia and photos from the 1955 Purdue graduate’s life.

That includes about 70,000 pages of fan mail Armstrong received after he became the first human to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.

The Ohio native made his famous walk after he manually landed the Apollo 11 lander to avoid a large lunar crater that could have doomed the mission.

Armstrong died in 2012 at age 82.

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AP-WF-03-18-19 0945GMT

Astronaut Neil Armstrong