Neil Armstrong the first manned Moon landing, and spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module. When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. After he resigned from NASA in
William Carpentier Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin from the Pacific Ocean, Carpentier was assigned to Helicopter 66, the primary rescue helicopter which ferried the men to the waiting "USS Hornet". Both Carpentier and NASA engineer John Hirasaki – who had come into contact with Moon dust – were confined with the astronauts for their twenty-one day quarantine. In the period following their release from isolation, the publicity demands on Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin became so great that Carpentier was sometimes pressed into service to make public appearances in their place after a United States Department of State publicist concluded that the