Who Is Gene Cernan? Last Man To Walk On The Moon Dies At 82

Eugene Cernan, a former NASA astronaut who was part of the Apollo lunar missions, and the last man to have walked on the surface of the moon, died Monday, surrounded by his family, at the age of 82.

Cernan, who was a U.S. Navy captain before joining NASA, flew to space three times, and was one of the only three men to have flown to the moon twice. He was also the second U.S. astronaut to have walked in space. But he is most known for being the last man on the moon.

His first trip to the moon was in May 1969, when he piloted the lunar module pilot of Apollo 10, which descended to within eight nautical miles of the moon and performed tests that allowed Apollo 11 to take Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of our rocky neighbor.

In a 2007 interview for NASA’s Oral History Project, he said: “I keep telling Neil Armstrong that we painted that white line in the sky all the way to the Moon down to 47,000 feet so he wouldn't get lost, and all he had to do was land. Made it sort of easy for him.”

Three years later, in December 1972, Cernan flew to the moon again in Apollo 17, which would be NASA’s last manned mission to the lunar surface. And soon after departing Earth, the crew took the iconic “Blue Marble” photograph of our home planet that changed the way we saw ourselves.

The mission was remarkable for a number of other reasons too. “Apollo 17 established several new records for human space flight, including the longest lunar landing flight (301 hours, 51 minutes); longest lunar surface extravehicular activities (22 hours, 6 minutes); largest lunar sample return (nearly 249 pounds); and longest time in lunar orbit (147 hours, 48 minutes),” according to NASA.

In a statement Monday, Aldrin said: “Gene is the last person to step foot on another celestial body. He was the last man on the moon and he wasn’t happy about that and continually stressed that he didn’t want to be the last. Gene was probably the strongest spokesman for astronauts for lunar travel and advocating a return to the moon.”

Born in Chicago on March 14, 1934, Cernan graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1956, and later earned a master’s in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He was chosen by NASA in October 1963, and also piloted the Gemini 9 mission in June 1966.