Two French astronauts paid tribute to Neil Armstrong on Sunday, calling the first man on the moon a legend a day after he died aged 82. "He was a living legend ... a great man, someone full of self-restraint, extremely discreet," Jean-Loup Chretien, the first Frenchman in space, said of the famed Apollo 11 commander in an interview with the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.
Chretien, who met Armstrong on several occasions, also praised his "great professionalism".
Jean-Francois Clervoy, one of France's two serving European Space Agency astronauts, also tipped his hat to Armstrong, lauding him as an "absolute legend."
"Armstrong remains and will remain the first, he's the one who made history, an absolute legend," Clervoy told AFP Sunday.
"Besides the moon, Armstrong must have had a lucky star over his head!" he added, recalling that Armstrong escaped death several times on previous missions and even while training for the Apollo 11 flight.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault also offered a tribute Sunday, saying Armstrong had paved the way for a new era of space exploration.
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