Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon – an experience that he said made him "belong to the universe," died on Monday at the age of 82, the US space agency said.
Cernan, who was also the second man to walk in space, died surrounded by his family, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement without providing details.
A separate statement from his family and released by NASA said his death came after "ongoing health issues."
Cernan and fellow Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt became members of the most exclusive club in the universe on 11 December 1972, when they stepped from their lunar landing module onto the moon's surface. Only 10 other people – all American astronauts – had done so before and none since.
“Oh, my golly,” Cernan told mission control in Houston as he touched the moon. “Unbelievable.”
For three days, the moon was home for Cernan and Schmitt. They rambled more than 30 km in their lunar roving vehicle and gathered more than 100 kg of rocks during their 22 hours of exploration of craters and hills.
“I knew that I had changed in the past three days and that I no longer belonged solely to the Earth,” Cernan wrote in a memoir titled The Last Man on the Moon. “Forever more, I would belong to the universe.”
Cernan was 38-years-old when he blasted off for the moon on 7 December 1972, as the commander of Apollo 17. With Ronald Evans orbiting above in the command module, Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist, rode the lunar lander to the moon's surface four days later.
They explored for about seven hours each day and Cernan wrote that moonwalking was painful for him because he had injured a tendon in his leg two months earlier playing softball.
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On the day before returning to the command module, Cernan drove the rover to a point away from the lunar module so that a camera on the vehicle could film their departure. He then paid tribute to his young daughter, Tracy.
“I took a moment to kneel and with a single finger, scratched Tracy’s initials, TDC, in the lunar dust, knowing those three letters would remain there undisturbed for more years than anyone could imagine,” Cernan wrote in his memoir.
The size 10-1/2 boot prints that Cernan made on his walk back to the module afterward marked the last steps man has taken on the moon. Cernan said he spoke spontaneously as he returned to the lunar module.
Wanted to Stay
In a 2007 interview for NASA's oral history programme, Cernan recalled his final moments before climbing back in the lander.
“Those steps up that ladder, they were tough to make,” he said. “I didn’t want to go up. I wanted to stay a while.”
Apollo 17 was Cernan's last flight as an astronaut after 566 hours and 15 minutes in space.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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