Buzz Aldrin shot down two MiG-15 aircraft. After earning a Sc.D. degree in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aldrin was selected as a member of NASA's Astronaut Group 3, making him the first astronaut with a doctoral degree. His doctoral thesis was "Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous", earning him the nickname "Dr. Rendezvous" from fellow astronauts. His first space flight was Gemini 12 during which he spent over five hours on extravehicular activity (EVA) outside the spacecraft. Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on July 21, 1969 (UTC), nine minutes after Armstrong first touched the surface,
Buzz Aldrin leave the spacecraft. The standup EVA mimicked some of the actions he would do during his free-flight EVA, so he could compare the effort expended between the two. It set an EVA record of two hours and 20 minutes. The next day Aldrin performing his free-flight EVA. He climbed across the newly installed hand-holds to the Agena and installed the cable needed for the gravity-gradient stabilization experiment. Aldrin performed numerous tasks, including as installing electrical connectors and testing tools that would be needed for Project Apollo. A dozen two-minute rest periods prevented him from becoming fatigued. His second EVA concluded