Former American astronaut Eugene Cernan, who as the last person to walk on the moon returned to Earth with a message of “peace and hope for all mankind,” died on Monday, his family said. He was 82.

Cernan was with his relatives when he died at a Houston hospital following "ongoing heath issues," family spokeswoman Melissa Wren told The Associated Press. His family said his devotion to lunar exploration never waned.

“Even at the age of 82, Eugene was passionate about sharing his desire to see the continued human exploration of space and encouraged our nation’s leaders and young people not to let him remain the last man to walk on the moon,” his family said in a statement released by NASA.

Cernan was commander of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission and on his third space flight when he set foot on the lunar surface. On December 14, 1972, he became the last of only a dozen men to walk on the moon – and he traced his only child’s initials in the dust before climbing the ladder of the lunar module the last time. It was a moment that forever defined him in both the public eye and his own.

“Those steps up that ladder, they were tough to make,” Cernan recalled in a 2007 oral history. “I didn’t want to go up. I wanted to stay a while.” Cernan called it “perhaps the brightest moment of my life.” Decades later, he tried to ensure he was not the last person to walk on the moon, testifying before US Congress to push for a return. But as the years went by, he realized he would not live to witness someone follow in his footsteps – still visible on the moon more than 40 years later.

Cernan died less than six weeks after another American space hero, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.

A documentary about Cernan’s life, "The Last Man on the Moon," was released in 2016.

(An abridged report from China Daily)