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 that was a dead end, as it would be Gemini 13 which did not exist; the last scheduled mission in the program was Gemini 12. But the February 28, 1966, deaths of the Gemini 9 prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, in an air crash, led to Lovell and Aldrin being moved up one mission on March 21 to backup for Gemini 9, which put them in position as prime crew for Gemini 12. They were officially designated its prime crew on June 17, 1966, with Gordon Cooper and Gene Cernan as their backups. Initially, Gemini 12's mission objectives