Neil Armstrong was an astronaut on the Gemini 8 mission. There was an emergency in space when the spacecraft began to spin very fast. Armstrong used small control engines to stop the spinning, but this used important fuel, so the mission had to end early. The astronauts splashed down in the ocean near Okinawa, Japan, about 10 hours after the March 16, 1966 launch, and a U.S. Navy ship took them to Naha Air Base in Japan.

An army veteran and photographer named Ron McQueeney helped with the recovery work and he took photos of Neil Armstrong and David Scott after the splashdown. The photos show them on the deck of a U.S. Navy vessel and waving to service members on land. One photo shows the Gemini 8 capsule being lifted into the air for transport. McQueeney’s widow later donated these photos to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Ohio, Armstrong’s hometown.

The museum director, Dante Centuori, says the smiles on the astronauts’ faces show their professionalism and their ability to stay calm after a life-threatening mission. A science historian, Robert Poole, says the smiles also show that they are very happy to be alive. He says Armstrong’s cool behavior in this crisis helped him later become the commander of Apollo 11.