Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell dies at age 85
Raised in NM, Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell — who grew up in New Mexico, became the sixth man on the moon and later devoted his life to exploring unexplained phenomena — has died in Florida. He was 85.
Mitchell died Thursday night at a West Palm Beach hospice after a short illness, his daughter Kimberly Mitchell said. Mitchell’s death coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission from Jan. 31-Feb. 9, 1971.
Edgar Dean Mitchell was born Sept. 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas, and at age 5 moved with his family to Roswell, where his father ran a cattle ranch. He eventually moved to Artesia and began flying lessons there at age 14, earning his pilot’s license at 16.
The 1948 graduate of Artesia High School and Navy veteran held degrees in industrial management, aeronautical engineering, and aeronautics and astronautics. He held honorary doctorates from New Mexico State University and several other universities. He earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining NASA.
Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon. The Apollo 14 mission launched January 31, 1971, landed on the moon Feb. 5, and returned safely to
Earth Feb. 9, the New Mexico Museum of Space History said in a news release.
Mitchell was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo in 1979.
“How fitting that Ed passed away within hours of the 45th anniversary of his landing on the moon,” said museum executive director Chris Orwoll. “New Mexico is privileged to have been home to two Apollo-era moonwalkers and we are all saddened for the loss of this amazing man.”
Harrison Hagan “Jack” Schmitt, a U.S. senator from New Mexico, was the last of the Apollo astronauts to set foot on the moon.
Mitchell was the author of several books, essays and articles, he said. One of his better-known quotes, from his book “The Way of the Explorer,” said in regard to how his mission to space affected him, “you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you (censored).’’’
Mitchell, one of only 12 humans to set foot on the moon, was not a typical rationalist astronaut. In his later years, he said that aliens visited Earth and claimed that the U.S. government covered up evidence about the landings. He also tried to prove that the supposed psychic spoon bender Uri Geller and faith healers were legitimate.
He attempted to communicate telepathically with friends at home during his Apollo mission. He had an “epiphany” in space that led him to focus on studying consciousness, physics and other mysteries.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called Mitchell “one of the pioneers in space exploration on whose shoulders we now stand.”
He left NASA in 1972 and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is dedicated to exploring the mysteries of the human mind and the universe.