Captain Gene Cernan was the third man to walk in space, one of only three people to go to the Moon twice and the last man to leave a footprint on the lunar surface.
The final words he spoke on the Moon in December 1972 represented everything the Apollo missions stood for. “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return,” he said, “with peace and hope for all mankind.”
More than 40 years on, you might imagine Cernan has had enough of talking about the Moon. But it seems Apollo astronauts never retire and, at 80, he is still passionate about America’s past space glories and the future of human space exploration.