Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s family was reportedly paid $6 million by a hospital in a wrongful death settlement after allegations he died due to medical malpractice.

Mercy Health paid the settlement behind closed doors in 2014, two years after Armstrong died in 2012 at Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital in Cincinnati at age 82, The New York Times reports.

ADVERTISEMENT

At the time of his death, Armstrong’s family said he died due to complications from coronary bypass, saying in a statement that “we are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.”

But the Times reported that Armstrong’s two sons waged a wrongful death lawsuit against the state’s largest hospital system, Mercy Health, accusing the Fairfield medical center of causing the heart complication and committing other errors in its post-surgical care that led to their father’s death.

Doctors performed bypass surgery right after they ran medical tests and implanted temporary wires in his heart to help pace his heartbeat. But after doctors removed the wires, the former astronaut bled internally and suffered from low blood pressure, forcing him to undergo more procedures, the Times notes.

He was later taken into a catheterization lab and then to an operating room, the Times reported.

"The decision to go to the cath lab was THE major error," Dr. Joseph Bavaria, a vice chair of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a review of the incident at the request of Armstrong’s family, according to the Times.

The hospital defended its actions but ultimately paid the settlement to avoid a lengthy legal fight, the Times reports.

The news comes days after the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which sent Armstrong to the moon in what has since become an iconic moment in the history of U.S. space travel.