Buzz Aldrin while Command Module Pilot Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. A Presbyterian elder, Aldrin became the first person to hold a religious ceremony on the Moon when he privately took communion. Upon leaving NASA in 1971, he became Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. He retired from the Air Force in 1972, after 21 years of service. His autobiographies "Return to Earth," (1973) and "Magnificent Desolation" (2009), recount his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years after leaving NASA. He continued to advocate for space exploration, particularly a manned mission to Mars, and developed the
Buzz Aldrin confrontation, during which Sibrel followed Aldrin despite being told to leave him alone, and called him "thief, liar and coward", the 72-year-old Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw, which was caught on camera by Sibrel's film crew. Aldrin stated that he had acted to defend himself and his stepdaughter. Witnesses stated that Sibrel had aggressively poked Aldrin with a Bible. Additional mitigating factors were that Sibrel sustained no visible injury and did not seek medical attention, and that Aldrin had no criminal record; the police declined to press charges against Aldrin. In 2005, while being interviewed for a documentary titled