Mitchell, Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa were the crew of Apollo 14, which was launched on 31 January 1971.
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Mitchell’s death leaves only seven survivors of the 12 men who have walked on the moon: Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, David Scott, John W. Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.
Mitchell was “a good complement to Shepard on Apollo 14 because Shepard had been away from training for a few years and Mitchell really understood the lunar module and could help bring Shepard along in the training”, Chaikin said. They also set records for the longest distance traversed on the lunar surface, the largest payload returned from the moo, and the longest time spent on the moon for their 33-hour stay.
Shepard collected about 95 pounds of samples in more than nine hours walking the surface of the moon.
He said he had undergone an epiphany in space and in later life revealed a belief that aliens had visited Earth.
Mitchell died in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the lunar landing, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
The Apollo 14 crew were the first to ever transmit full-color television images from the surface of the moon.
The astronaut, who has created the Institute of Noetic Sciences for the research of paranormal phenomena and consciousness, was born in Hereford, Texas, in 1930. 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 the 6th man to walk on the Moon on the 8th manned mission.
“After Kennedy announced the moon programme, that’s what I wanted because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I’ve been devoted to that – to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that’s what kept me going”, Mitchell said in 1997 interview for NASA’s oral history programme.
In the family statement provided to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, adopted daughter Kimberly Mitchell said her brother and sisters “consider ourselves so blessed to have had the Dad we did”. The lunar module landed on February 5, 1971.
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Although Mitchell contended it was a gift, NASA sued to stop the auction and eventually Mitchell agreed to donate it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. He joined the Navy and got a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining NASA.
