In Brief

Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin Evacuated from South Pole Due to Illness

Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin was evacuated today (Dec. 1) from the South Pole due to illness, where he had been visiting as part of a tourist group.

Aldrin is 86 years old, and was the second man to walk on the moon (after Neil Armstrong) during NASA's historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission in July 1969. According to a Twitter post by Aldrin, he departed for the South Pole on Tuesday (Nov. 29). The tourism operator White Desert reported that Aldrin was in stable condition when he was evacuated to McMurdo Station, on the Antarctic coast, by the U.S. Antarctic Program. He was under the care of a doctor from the program, they said.

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"The National Science Foundation (NSF) has agreed to provide a humanitarian medical evacuation flight for an ailing visitor from its Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast and then to New Zealand," the National Science Foundation said in a statement. "The flight to New Zealand will be scheduled as soon as possible."

The NSF said that they will make additional statements about Aldrin's medical condition if warranted.

Since his retirement from NASA, Aldrin has been an active proponent of Mars colonization.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Sarah Lewin
Associate Editor

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.