The Last Men of the Moon: Stories of the Surviving Apollo Astronauts

They were the pioneers of space exploration – the 24 NASA astronauts who traveled to the Moon on the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

Now, in 2024, the race to put humans back on the moon is set to heat up once again.

On January 8, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur spacecraft — a private competitor to Elon Musk's SpaceX — blasted off on its first lunar mission, carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine 1 spacecraft. Peregrine aims to be the first U.S. vehicle to make a soft landing On the moon since the Apollo program. When it reaches the moon in February.

In November, NASA hopes to launch Artemis 2, the first manned lunar expedition in more than 50 years. It hopes the new program will lead to astronauts living on the moon this decade. China also hopes that there will be people on the moon by 2030.

The planned launches highlight the sad reality that the number of remaining Apollo astronauts is dwindling. The show's Ken Mattingly and Frank Borman died within a few days of each other late last year.

There are now only eight people left who have made a trip beyond Earth's orbit. Who are they and what are their stories?

On July 21, 1969, former fighter pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin left the lunar lander and became the second person to set foot on the moon's surface. And about 20 minutes earlier, its captain, Neil Armstrong, was first.

Aldrin's first words were: “Beautiful view.”

“Isn't that something?” “Great view out here,” Armstrong asked.

“A wonderful ruin,” Aldrin replied.

The fact that he was in second place did not sit comfortably with him. His colleague Michael Collins said that Aldrin “resented not being the first on the moon more than he appreciated being the second.”

But Aldrin was still proud of his accomplishment. Many years later, when confronted by a man claiming that Apollo 11 was an elaborate lie, the 72-year-old Aldrin punched him in the jaw.

After Neil Armstrong's death in 2012, Aldrin said: “I know that millions of others from around the world have joined me in mourning the death of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew.”

Despite the difficulties he faced later in life, he never lost his thirst for adventure and joined expeditions to both the North and South Poles, the latter at the age of 86.

While he embraced his fame, he remained an advocate for the space program, especially the need to explore Mars.

“I don't think we should just go there and back, we did that with Apollo,” he says.

His name has become known to new generations as the inspiration for Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story film series. In January 2023, at the age of 93, he married for the fourth time.

In December 1968, Bill Anders flew on Apollo 8, the first mission in which humans traveled beyond low-Earth orbit, and the first manned mission to reach and orbit the Moon.

When the spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon to make its fourth pass across its face, the crew witnessed an “Earthrise” for the first time in human history, and Anders captured the moment on film.

The image is widely credited with catalyzing the global environmental movement and led to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.

Speaking about that moment, Anders said: “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing we discovered is the Earth.”

After retiring from the space program in 1969, Anders worked extensively in the aerospace industry for several decades. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s.

There are only four people alive who have walked on the moon, and Charlie Duke is one of them. He did so when he was 36 years old, making him the youngest person to set foot on the moon.

In a later interview with the BBC, he spoke of the “amazing terrain.”

“Its beauty…the sharp contrast between the blackness of space and the lunar horizon…I will never forget it. It was so dramatic.”

But it did play another important role in NASA's lunar exploration. After the landing of Apollo 11 in 1969, it was Duke — handling mission control as a capsule communicator — who was waiting nervously on the other end of the line when Neil Armstrong said: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

In his distinctive Southern accent, Duke responded: “Roger, calm down. We're copying you down, you've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again.”

He later told the BBC: “I really meant it, I was holding my breath for the last minute or so.”

In 2022, Duke told the BBC that he was excited about NASA's Artemis mission, but warned that the mission would not be easy for the new generation of astronauts.

“They chose a site near the South Pole for the landing, because if there was any ice on the Moon, it would be in that area. So it's going to be difficult – because it's really tough up there. But we'll make it work.” “.

Charlie Duke now lives outside San Antonio, Texas, with Dorothy, to whom he has been married for 60 years.

Fred Hayes was part of the Apollo 13 crew that narrowly avoided disaster in 1970 after an explosion aboard led to the mission being canceled when the vehicle was more than 200,000 miles (321,000 km) from Earth.

The whole world watched tensely as NASA attempted to safely return the damaged spacecraft and its crew. Once they returned, Hayes and bandmates James Lovell and Jack Swigert became celebrities, much to their obvious surprise.

“I feel like I might have missed something while I was there,” he told talk show host Johnny Carson when the crew appeared on The Tonight Show.

Hayes never reached the moon. Although he was scheduled to be the commander of Apollo 19, that mission was canceled due to budget cuts, as happened with all other flights after Apollo 17.

He later served as a test pilot on the prototype space shuttle Enterprise.

Like many of his fellow Apollo graduates, after leaving NASA, Hayes continued to work in the aerospace industry until his retirement.

Lovell, Borman and Anders made history when they conducted the first lunar mission aboard Apollo 8, testing the command/service module and its life support systems in preparation for the subsequent landing of Apollo 11.

Their vehicle has already made 10 orbits around the moon before returning home. Lovell was later supposed to be the fifth human to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 13 – but of course that never happened.

Instead, his brush with death was immortalized in the film Apollo 13, in which he played Tom Hanks.

After retiring from NASA in 1973, Lovell worked in the communications industry. Marilyn, his wife of more than 60 years, who became the focus of media attention during the infamous incident, died in August 2023.

Jim Lovell is one of only three men to have traveled to the Moon twice, and after Frank Borman's death in November 2023, he became the oldest living astronaut.

Unlike most other astronauts of the time, Schmitt was not a pilot in the US forces.

A geologist and academic, he initially instructed NASA astronauts on what to look for during their geological field trips to the Moon before becoming a scientist and astronaut himself in 1965.

Schmitt was part of the last manned mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, with Commander Eugene Cernan, one of the last two men to set foot on the Moon, in December 1972.

After leaving NASA in 1975, he was elected to the US Senate from his home state of New Mexico, but served only one term. Since then he has worked as a consultant in various industries in addition to continuing in academia.

He is also known for his opposition to the scientific consensus on climate change.

David Scott, Apollo 15's commander, is one of only four men alive to have walked on the Moon — but he was also one of the first to fly a spacecraft on it, too.

In 1971, Scott and colleague James Irwin tested the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), “man's first wheels on the Moon” as it was called. Traveling at speeds of up to 8 mph (12 km/h) the LRV allowed astronauts to travel great distances from the lunar lander much faster than they could walk.

“On the first mission, you never know if it's going to work or not,” he later recalled. “The greatest thrill was getting it out and running and it actually worked.”

After returning from the Moon, Scott worked in various management positions within NASA, before joining the private sector.

He has also served as a consultant on numerous film and television projects, including Apollo 13 and the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon.

As commander of Apollo 10 in May 1969, Tom Stafford led the program's final test mission before the planned Apollo 11 landing.

In that mission, Stafford and pilot Eugene Cernan became the first crew to fly a lunar lander outside Earth's orbit.

Shortly after his return, Stafford was appointed Chief of the Astronaut Office, a position he held for approximately two years.

In 1975, he was NASA's commander of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint space mission between the United States and the then-Soviet Union, and a precursor to the International Space Station. His Soviet counterpart, Alexei Leonov, became a lifelong friend.

Together they participated in an important handshake in orbit, something that would have been unimaginable at the height of the Space Race.

What will the next generation of lunar adventurers achieve?