WASHINGTON — Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, was evacuated Thursday from the South Pole, the U.S. National Science Foundation said.
The 86-year-old former astronaut was in stable condition when he left the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on an emergency flight to McMurdo Station, a U.S. scientific base on Antarctica’s Ross Island, tour operator White Desert said.
“Mr. Aldrin was visiting the Pole as part of a tourist group and while there his condition deteriorated,” White Desert said in a statement.
Aldrin had planned to visit the South Pole until Dec. 12, according to his website.
Aldrin landed with Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Along with fellow crew member Michael Collins, they were embraced as national heroes. He has led the most public life of the three, despite a struggle with alcoholism and depression in the years after the flight.
He has kept up a hectic schedule in recent years as a prominent advocate of the U.S. space program, pushing for a flight to Mars, and a figure in popular culture in the decades since his moon flight.
After joining U.S. space agency NASA in 1963, he helped develop docking techniques for orbiting spacecraft that are still used today, and in 1966 he performed the world’s first successful spacewalk.
Perhaps more than any other astronaut, Aldrin has become a fixture in popular culture. The popular Disney character Buzz Lightyear was named for Aldrin.