Gene Cernan, Last Man To Walk On The Moon, Has Died

Cernan was born in Chicago in 1935 and graduated from Indiana's Purdue University in 1956. He became a Navy attack pilot before being selected for NASA's astronaut program in 1963. Three years later, he became the second American to walk in space during a Gemini 9 flight ― something he called the "spacewalk from hell" because of several malfunctions in his spacesuit. He logged a total of 566 hours and 15 minutes in space, more than 73 hours of which were on the moon's surface, either in the module or on the ground. Cernan eventually retired from NASA in 1976.