Astronaut Edgar Mitchell Of Apollo 14 Dies At 85

Apollo 14 was his only space mission.

On Jan. 31, 1971, Mitchell, Adm. Alan Shepard Jr. and Col. Stuart Roosa launched the spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center.

It was the third manned mission to the Moon and Mitchell became the sixth human to walk on the lunar surface.

Only 12 people have ever accomplish the feat.

Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, called Mitchell one of the pioneers in space exploration on whose shoulders we now stand. Among his achievements, Edgar Mitchell helped design and test the lunar modules that first reached the moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

The men also took time out from their mission to hit golfballs (Shephard) and take color photographs (Mitchell), including the iconic image of Shephard standing next to an American flag. Shepard later wrote that Mitchell remained Mr. Unflappable during the scare.

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”.

Asked how other astronauts viewed Mitchell’s interest in psychic phenomena, Chaikin said “oh, they joked about it. That was pretty much the reaction”.

He said he believed that extra-terrestrial unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had visited the Earth, but acknowledged that he had never seen one. He spoke publicly about his belief in faith healing and aliens, and said he’d had an “epiphany” in space that led him to focus on unexplained phenomena.

“That was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness”, he said in an interview years after the Apollo 14 three-man mission.

According to the Gizmag, some of us of a certain age felt a little bit older today after news that Captain Edgar Dean “Ed” Mitchell has died age 85. He had a B.S.in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon (1952), a B.S.in Aeronautics from the US Naval Postgraduate School (1961). and a Doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1964).

Edgar Mitchell was part of the Apollo 14 space crew that flew to the moon in 1971.

Although Mitchell was born in Hereford, Texas, he always considered Artesia, New Mexico, his home because he spent most of his childhood there.

Mitchell is survived by two daughters, three adopted sons, and nine grandchildren, among other family members.