Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is lying low during the coronavirus pandemic.
Aldrin, 90, said he’s self-isolating as the outbreak swells.
“Lying on my ass and locking the door,” he told Ars Technica when asked what he was doing to protect himself.
Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, spent three weeks in quarantine after returning from the moon in 1969. The quarantine was to prevent the spread of any contagions that he and his fellow astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, may have carried back to Earth.
The three astronauts were escorted from their life raft to the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier after the Apollo Command Module landed in the Pacific Ocean. From there, they were put in an Airstream trailer that had been converted to a mobile quarantine facility. The trailer was flown by a C-141 aircraft to Houston, where the three men spent three weeks inside the Lunar Receiving Laboratory.
Aldrin said he spent the quarantine filling out paperwork and jogging around the hallway.
