Gene Cernan, last astronaut to walk on the Moon, dies

Cernan was with his relatives when he died on Monday at a Houston hospital following ongoing heath issues, family spokeswoman Melissa Wren told The Associated Press. His family said his devotion to lunar exploration never waned.

“Even at the age of 82, Gene was passionate about sharing his desire to see the continued human exploration of space and encouraged our nation’s leaders and young people to not let him remain the last man to walk on the Moon,” his family said in a statement released by NASA.

Cernan was commander of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission and on his third space flight when he set foot on the lunar surface. On Dec 14, 1972, he became the last of only a dozen men to walk on the Moon and he traced his only child’s initials in the dust before climbing the ladder of the lunar module the last time. It was a moment that forever defined him in both the public eye and his own.

“Those steps up that ladder, they were tough to make,” Cernan recalled in a 2007 oral history. “I didn’t want to go up. I wanted to stay a while.” Cernan called it “perhaps the brightest moment of my  life. It’s like you would want to freeze that moment and take it home with you. But you can’t.”