David Bowie says Aldrin nearly ready to go home

CHRISTCHURCH (NEW ZEALAND) - Former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, expects to be discharged from a New Zealand hospital soon, thanks to the Starman's namesake David Bowie.

Former NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin's recovery from illness is being credited to David Bowie -- a New Zealand doctor not the late british musician

"Thank heaven @TheRealBuzz's doctor is David Bowie. You can't make this stuff up," his manager Christina Korp tweeted Tuesday with a photo of Aldrin in a Christchurch hospital along with the doctor who has the same name as the late British singer.

She said Aldrin's daughter Jan had arrived "just in time for the wonderful Dr David Bowie to say maybe 1-2 days til we can go home".

Aldrin, 86, was evacuated from Antarctica to Christchurch last Friday after experiencing health problems while on a mission to the South Pole.

He has been told he will not be able to return to the United States until the congestion in his lungs clears.

Korp tweeted that Aldrin was now "back to his natural state! iPhone in hand, texting. Off the oxygen, which is great! He's stubbornly getting better".

David Bowie the singer released his hit "Space Oddity" about a fictional astronaut just five days before the 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 mission, in which Neil Armstrong and Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the Moon.

Three years later Bowie released his follow up hit "Starman".

Aldrin said his main interest in visiting the South Pole was to experience and study conditions similar to life on Mars.