Buzz Aldrin is better known for being the second man to walk on the moon in the famous Apollo 11 mission. The retired astronaut is expanding his horizons into college basketball, filling out his first Bracket and comparing it to ESPN’s  Dick Vitale.

Edwin Eugene Aldrin, better known as Buzz Aldrin, is an American engineer and retired astronaut, he was the second person to ever walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong. During the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin was the lunar module pilot becoming the first person to land a spacecraft on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin is better known for being the second man to walk on the moon in the famous Apollo 11 mission. Photo credit: Blastr
Buzz Aldrin is better known for being the second man to walk on the moon in the famous Apollo 11 mission. Photo credit: Blastr

The 86-year-old astronaut is expanding his knowledge into college basketball, participating in the Allstate March Mayhem Challenge and filling out his first ever basketball bracket in behalf of the Space Center in Houston.

Aldrin based his winning teams for the bracket in an applied statistical analysis. Even though the former astronaut affirms he doesn’t know that much about college basketball, he analyzed the tournament and its history. Evaluating different match-ups and of course, using the Mayhem Bracket Predictor.

Buzz Aldrin’s bracket was up against ESPN’s college basketball personality Dick Vitale, a specialist in the March Madness subject.

Vitale is well known in the world of college basketball, having his own Vitale Bald Dome Index (VBDI) to make his tournament bracket pick. The four champions for this year, according to Vitale, will be Oklahoma, Kansas, Michigan State and Kentucky. In case, Dick Vitale’s bracket wins the donation will be on behalf of the  V Foundation for cancer research.

Buzz Aldrin during an exclusive interview to CBS News, also talked about NASA’s mission to mars. The former astronaut has always been a big advocate to explore and colonize the red planet and the moon, re-assuring his position of the great advances made thanks to the coalition of bringing international space agencies together.

“We are at the beginning of looking at bringing nations together for activities at the moon and helping them not compete with one another, but assist one another… It’s important now to bring together the nations that weren’t able to do it and help them do it. We need to move forward” Said the former colonel of the USAF, to CBS News.

Aldrin also talked about Scott Kelly, the recent astronaut that spend over a year on space and the great advances that have been made in space research thanks to Kelly and his identical twin Mark Kelly

The Allstate March Mayhem Challenge is celebrated throughout the whole month of March, Aldrin invited fans and supporters to follow his bracket compete with Dick Vitale’s on his twitter account @TheRealBuzz

Source: CBS News