Americans bid farewell today to Neil Armstrong, the first man to take a giant leap on to the moon.

Neil Armstrong never capitalised on his celebrity and just wanted to be part of a team – yet ended up making history and becoming an American hero, fellow astronauts said today as mourners gathered to celebrate the life of the first man to walk on the moon.

Neil Armstrong made “one giant leap for mankind” with a small step onto the moon.

Tributes have poured in from around the world to Neil Armstrong.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, is recovering from heart surgery, days after his 82nd birthday.

US President Barack Obama has presented the US Medal of Freedom to more than a dozen political and cultural greats at a ceremony in Washington.

GEORGE WASHINGTON was a Bruin.

Discovery ended its career as the world's most flown spaceship today, returning from orbit for the last time and taking off in a new direction as a museum piece.

Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the US networks’ golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called “the most trusted man in America”, has died at the age of 92.

A SPACECRAFT that made history in 2005 by firing a torpedo probe into a comet is setting off on a 1.6 billion mile journey across the solar system.

The launch of the first space shuttle flight in two and a half years has been delayed until at least Saturday because of a fuel gauge that mistakenly read full instead of empty.

OHIO, home state of seven US presidents and the state that denied John Kerry the White House, is used to being in the centre of presidential elections.

SpaceShipOne, the craft which promises to one day take Virgin Galactic tourists beyond the Earth’s atmosphere made a nail-biting ascent into space today.

Space tourism came a step closer today when a private commercial rocket flew into the near reaches of space for the first time.

President George Bush is set to announce plans to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior US administration officials said today.

Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying British-born astronaut Michael Foale and two others blasted off today for the International Space Station from the Russian space programme’s cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

US President George W. Bush led thousands of grieving space workers and their families, friends, neighbours in a solemn farewell today to the seven Columbia astronauts.