Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, dies aged 82

Astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, has died aged 82 in Texas, NASA has announced.

He was the commander of Apollo 17 which went to the Moon in December 1972, joining a select band of American astronauts.

Mr Cernan was the 11th person to walk on the surface of the Moon when he stepped from the lunar module Challenger.

His lunar module pilot, Jack Schmitt, became the 12th, but as commander, Mr Cernan was the last to re-enter the Challenger, so becoming the last man to set foot on the lunar surface.

He wrote the initials of his only child in the dust before climbing back into the module.

"I knew that I had changed in the past three days and that I no longer belonged solely to the Earth," Mr Cernan wrote in a memoir titled The Last Man on the Moon.

"Forever more, I would belong to the universe."