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Neil Armstrong 'Doing Great' After Heart Surgery

Neil Armstrong last November at the U.S. Capitol, when he and the other astronauts from the Apollo 11 mission were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.
Chip Somodevilla
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Getty Images
Neil Armstrong last November at the U.S. Capitol, when he and the other astronauts from the Apollo 11 mission were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.

There's word from the wife of first-man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong that he's "doing great" after cardiac bypass surgery on Tuesday, NBC News reports.

And that's good, tweets second-man-on-the-moon Buzz Aldrin, because he and Armstrong have "agreed to make it [to] the 50th Apollo Anniv in 2019."

Armstrong turned 82 on Sunday.

According to The Columbus Dispatch, "it wasn't clear where the surgery occurred or where Armstrong was recuperating." The newspaper adds that:

"Armstrong and his wife married in 1999 and made their home in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill, but he has largely stayed out of public view in recent years. He spoke at Ohio State University during a February event honoring John Glenn and the 50th anniversary of Glenn becoming the first American to orbit Earth."

Last November, Armstrong and fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Aldrin and Michael Collins, were awarded Congressional Gold Medals. Glenn was honored as well.

Last September, Armstrong and fellow Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan (the last man to set foot on the moon) urged Congress to find a way to restart the USA's manned space program. With the end of the space shuttle program, the U.S. now has no way to launch astronauts into space except to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft.

"For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable," Armstrong told lawmakers.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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