The wife of legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin has died.
Dr. Anca Faur Aldrin died on Tuesday just two years after the couple wed, according to a statement posted Wednesday on Facebook by the Faur and Aldrin families. She was 66.
“Dr. Anca Aldrin, wife of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, peacefully passed away last night with her husband and her son, Vlad Ghenciu by her side,” the statement read.
Faur was “an accomplished chemical engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh” and “served as the treasurer for the California Hydrogen Business Council and as Executive Vice President of Buzz Aldrin Ventures LLC,” the statement noted.
In a separate message in the statement, Aldrin, 95, paid tribute to his late wife, whom he wed during a small ceremony on his 93rd birthday in 2023.
Buzz Aldrin and wife Dr. Anca Faur first met at a work event in December 2017.
MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images via Getty Images
“I am so fortunate to have found and married the love of my life,” Aldrin, the second person to ever walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, said of Faur. “She brought joy to everything we did together. I will miss her dearly.”
Elsewhere in the statement, the families requested privacy “in their time of mourning.”
The former fighter pilot gushed about his wife in an interview with People in 2023, affectionately calling her the “Wizard of Oz package.”
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“When I met Anca I instantly recognized that here was a woman who is the whole Wizard of Oz package: Brains. Heart. Courage,” he said at the time. “There is something special about her and the way we connect so well.”
Meanwhile, Faur told People of their relationship, “We both felt deep in our hearts all these years that marrying each other felt right. That said, we were having such a wonderful courtship we felt no need to rush things.”
Aldrin was previously married to Joan Archer from 1954 to 1974, Beverly Van Zile from 1975 to 1978, and Lois Driggs Cannon from 1988 to 2012.
