Wellington, March 10 NZPA - Eighty-year-old American moonwalker Buzz Aldrin is on his way to New Zealand to headline an Auckland communications technology conference on Saturday -- and he's bringing his dance teacher.

Aldrin was the second person to set foot on the moon on July 20 1969, when he followed Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong.

Now he's practicing to lead his attractive 27-year-old dance partner, Ashly DelGrosso, in America's TV reality show Dancing With The Stars, a website, space.com reported.

A key speaker at the Telecommunications Industry Group's (TIG) Planet 2010 conference at the Sky City Convention Centre, Aldrin's more down-to-earth challenge is to practice the foxtrot with DelGrosso.

One of 11 contestants paired up with professional dancers to compete in the series' weekly dance-offs, the former astronaut said he was never a big dancer, so had a lot of catching up to do.

"I'm not known for that agility," Aldrin told space.com. "Whether it's flying a spacecraft or trying something out on the dance floor, it takes a while to really get comfortable with it."

He has mastered the cha-cha for the first episode to air on American television on March 22, and will spend part of his visit working on the foxtrot.

The pair are up against some stiff competition, including US Olympic figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek, but Aldrin says he plans to play hard.

"I wouldn't have gotten into the space program if I wasn't competitive," he said.

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