A picture taken on February 6, 1971 shows Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 lunar module pilot, moving across the lunar surface while looking over a traverse map during extravehicular activity (EVA).
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However the Apollo 14 mission was a success with Dr Mitchell and Dr Shepard completing the longest ever moon walk, lasting nine hours and 17 minutes. Eventually, he launched with Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa on Apollo 14. He and Shepard made two moon walks during the mission, making Mitchell the sixth man to walk on the moon. Despite a faulty Abort signal and malfunctioning radar, Mitchell and Shepard managed to land the LEM Antares closer to target than any of the other six Apollo landings.
Mitchell was known for attempting to communicate telepathically with his friends at home during the Apollo mission, and he claimed he had an “epiphany” in space that led him to study consciousness and physics.
Although Mitchell was born in Hereford, Texas, he always considered Artesia, New Mexico, his home because he spent most of his childhood there.
He left NASA in 1973 and founded the nonprofit Institute of Noetic Sciences, which supports “individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential”.
Prior to his voicing a belief in extraterrestrials, Dr Mitchell had enjoyed a distinguished and not uneventful career at Nasa.
In his book “The Way of the Explorer”, Mitchell wrote, “There was a sense that our presence as space travellers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but that there was an intelligent process at work”.
“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited”. He earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining NASA.
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He was in the news in 2011 when, threatened with a lawsuit from the US government, he returned a camera he’d kept as a memento of the mission. He also tried to prove that the supposed psychic spoon bender Uri Geller and faith healers were legitimate.
