The last man to walk on the moon died on Monday, according to NASA. NASA astronaut Eugene Cernan was 82 years old. The space agency said that his cause of death was not immediately known.

Cernan was the commander of the Apollo 17. He was in charge of the last moon mission and one of the final Apollo launches that blasted off in December 1972. After stepping out of the lunar module, Challenger, Cernan became the 11th human and last person to walk on the surface of the moon. 

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Cernan had some epic words when he landed on the moon. "America's challenge of today forged man's destiny of tomorrow, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and God willing, we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind," he said.

Cernan revealed a crucial epiphany he had while he was on the desolate yet grand surface of the moon in a documentary called "In the Shadow of the Moon" in 2007.

"There is too much purpose and logic for something too beautiful to happen by accident. There has to be someone bigger than you and me, not in a religious sense but more spiritual sense. There has to be a creator of the universe who is beyond all religions that we created ourselves that those religions ultimately governed our lives," he explained.

Before this mission, Cernan was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 10 and a pilot of the Gemini IX mission. The Apollo 10 served as a training mission for the historic Apollo 11 mission two months later.

Cernan was the second American in space during the Gemini IX mission in 1966. He clocked in a total of 566 hours and 15 minutes in space where 73 hours were spent on the surface of the moon. He retired from NASA in 1976.