The 12 Moonwalkers: Where Are They Now?

James Irwin

Reaching the moon was a spiritual experience for astronaut James Irwin.

"I felt the power of God as I'd never felt it before," he said about the July 1971 Apollo 15 mission. He was the lunar module pilot for the flight and explored the moon's surface for three days.

One year after the mission, Irwin resigned from NASA and the Air Force to form the religious organization High Flight Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colo.

According to High Flight's Web site, the astronaut started the organization to encourage others to experience "the Highest Flight possible with God."

"Jesus walking on the earth is more important than man walking on the moon," it quotes Irwin as saying.

The group organizes religious retreats and trips to the Holy Land. Irwin even led expeditions to Turkey's Mount Ararat in search of evidence of Noah's Ark.

In 1991, at age 61, he died of a heart attack.

"The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine," Irwin said. "That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man."

David Scott

Not even 40 years old, David Scott reached the pinnacle of his career and then wondered, "what's next?"

"When I landed on the moon and came back from the moon, I was 39 years old. My career had been finished. I'd finished my career. That's it. Now go find a new career," the Apollo 15 astronaut said in an interview with Chaikin.

But after his voyage to the moon in 1971, Scott stayed with NASA for about six more years, as deputy director and then director of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

In 1977, he left the space agency to found Scott Science and Technology, a specialized space project management and technical services company.

In 2004, he published "Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race" with Russian astronaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space.