Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, has died in South Florida. A Navy pilot, he joined NASA in 1966 as part of the agency’s astronaut corps.
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Mitchell and his Apollo 14 crew mates, Commander Alan Shepard Jr. and Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, took part in the third mission to land on Earth’s celestial neighbor in 1971.
Mitchel was a part of the crew of Apollo 14 which launched on January 31st, 1971.
He also was designated as a backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 16.
With Mitchell’s death, of the 12 men who have walked on the moon, seven survive: Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, David Scott, John W. Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. Shepard and Mitchell made two moonwalks during their 33-hour stay on the moon.
He said he believed that extra-terrestrial unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had visited the Earth, but acknowledged that he had never seen one.
Although Mitchell was born in Hereford, Texas, he always considered Artesia, New Mexico, his home because he spent most of his childhood there.
Mitchell was the author of several books, including his 1996 memoir, “The Way of the Explorer”. He had an “epiphany” in space that focused him on studying consciousness and other mysteries.
But it was the telepathy experiment on the ride home that would give Mitchell more notoriety.
‘It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me’.
Mitchell claimed the experiment was a success.
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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”. The U.S. government filed a lawsuit against him in that same year, saying he stole the camera. The two moonwalkers performed field geology investigations and collected numerous lunar material samples for return to Earth. He also tried to prove that the supposed psychic spoon bender Uri Geller and faith healers were legit. Mitchell snapped the iconic picture of Shepard standing next to an American flag while on the moon, and Shepard even hit a couple of golf balls while there.
