Project Mercury also excluded civilian NASA X-15 pilot Neil Armstrong, though he had been selected by the US Air Force in 1958 for its Man In Space Soonest program, which was replaced by Mercury. Although Armstrong had been a combat-experienced NAP during the Korean War, he left active duty in 1952. Armstrong became NASA's first civilian astronaut in 1962 when he was selected for NASA's second group, and became the first man on the Moon in 1969. It was further stipulated that candidates should be between 25 and 40 years old, no taller than , and hold a college degree in a
Neil Armstrong Observatory the study of physics, is named for Isaac Newton. The observatory is named Neil Armstrong in honor of the first man to touch the moon, in 1969. Neil Armstrong Observatory The Neil Armstrong Observatory was completed March 1, 2014, making Nicaragua the only country in Latin America with an astronomical observatory reserved for use by scholars. The observatory, which cost half a million U.S. dollars to build, is located at the Pierre and Marie Curie School in Managua. The building consists of two floors plus a dome of more than 4.5 square meters. The telescope's main lens is 11 inches