Buzz Aldrin service. His father and father's close friend General Jimmy Doolittle attended the formal retirement ceremony. Aldrin's autobiographies "Return to Earth," (1973) and "Magnificent Desolation" (2009), recounted his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years after leaving NASA. On September 9, 2002, Aldrin was lured to a Beverly Hills hotel on the pretext of being interviewed for a Japanese children's television show on the subject of space. When he arrived, Moon landing conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel accosted him with a film crew and demanded he swear on a Bible that the Moon landings were not faked. After a brief
Buzz Aldrin eight minutes after the Agena had been launched, it had suffered a loss of chamber pressure. The Mission and Flight Directors therefore decided not to risk the main engine. This would be the only mission objective that was not achieved. Instead, the Agena's secondary propulsion system was used to allow the spacecraft to rendezvous with a total eclipse over South America on November 12, which Lovell and Aldrin photographed through the spacecraft windows. Aldrin performed three EVAs. The first was a standup EVA on November 12, in which the spacecraft door was opened and he stood up, but did not