Astronaut was last man to walk on moon
Former astronaut Gene Cernan, the last of only a dozen men to walk on the moon, has died. He was 82.
Cernan died Monday after suffering “ongoing health issues,” his family said in a statement released by NASA.
“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,” the family said.
Cernan, commander of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission, set foot on the lunar surface during his third spaceflight. He became the last person to walk on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972, tracing 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.”
Decades later, Cernan tried to ensure he wasn’t the last person to walk on the moon, testifying before Congress to push for a return. But as the years went by, he realized he wouldn’t live to witness someone follow in his footsteps — still visible on the moon more than 40 years later.
“Neil [Armstrong, who died in 2012] and I aren’t going to see those next young Americans who walk on the moon,” Cernan told Congress in 2011. “When I leave this planet, I want to know where we are headed as a nation. That’s my big goal.”
Eugene A. Cernan was born in 1934 in Chicago and graduated from Purdue University in 1956. He had been a Navy pilot and earned a master’s in aeronautical engineering when NASA selected him in October 1963 as one of 14 members of its third astronaut class.
In all, Cernan logged 566 hours and 15 minutes in space, more than 73 hours of them on the moon’s surface.
After completing that last moon walk and returning to the lunar module, Cernan famously said, “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
Cernan is survived by his wife, Jan Nanna Cernan; his daughter and son-in-law, Tracy Cernan Woolie and Marion Woolie; stepdaughter Kelly Nanna Taff and her husband, Michael; stepdaughter Danielle Nanna Ellis; and nine grandchildren.