Armstrong inspired ‘a generation of Irish scientists and engineers’

One Ireland’s leading experts on space exploration has said Neil Armstrong inspired an entire generation of scientists and engineers when he took his one small step in July 1969.

Dr Niall Smith, founding director of Blackrock Castle Observatory and head of research at Cork Institute of Technology, said the world of science and exploration had lost a true icon with Armstrong’s death.

“It was an amazing event,” he said of Armstrong’s moonwalk following the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon on July 20, 1969. “It was something which people felt you couldn’t do, but then when it was achieved, there was this sense that anything was possible.