Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (1930 - 2016) RIP

The former Apollo astronaut Ed Mitchell has died at the age of 85, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of his Apollo 14 mission.

Born in Texas, he graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology before becoming a naval pilot. In 1966 he was selected to become an astronaut and was appointed to the back-up crew of Apollo 10 with a view to being on the prime crew of Apollo 13.

However, mission commander Alan Shepard was still recovering from Meuniere's Disease so to give him more time the crews of Apollo 13 and 14 were swapped, meaning that Mitchell avoided the ill-fated mission, and in 1971 he became the sixth of only twelve people to walk on the lunar surface. For two days, February 5 and 6, 1971, Mitchell and Shepard deployed and activated scientific equipment and experiments on the lunar surface. They collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth.

Mitchell was unusual amongst the astronaut fraternity in that he openly championed some decidedly non-NASA causes.

His interests include consciousness and paranormal phenomena. On his way back to Earth during the Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful savikalpa samādhi experience, and also claimed to have conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth. The results of said experiments were published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1971. He is the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) for the purpose of consciousness research and other "related phenomena". On the Opie and Anthony radio show, Buzz Aldrin described a psychic communication experiment that Mitchell conducted during the Apollo 14 flight, wherein Mitchell attempted to transmit information to participants on Earth.

Mitchell claimed that a teenage remote healer living in Vancouver and using the pseudonym Adam Dreamhealer helped him heal kidney cancer from a distance. Mitchell said that while he never had a biopsy, "I had a sonogram and MRI that was consistent with renal carcinoma." Adam worked (distantly) on Mitchell from December 2003 until June 2004, when the "irregularity was gone and we haven't seen it since".

He publicly expressed his opinions that he is "90 percent sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets". Dateline NBC conducted an interview with Mitchell in 1996, during which he discussed meeting with officials from three countries who claimed to have had personal encounters with extraterrestrials. He offered his opinion that the evidence for such "alien" contact was "very strong" and "classified" by governments, who were covering up visitations and the existence of alien beings' bodies in places such as Roswell, New Mexico. He further claimed that UFOs had provided "sonic engineering secrets" that were helpful to the U.S. government. Mitchell's book, The Way of the Explorer, discusses his journey into mysticism and space.

In 2004, he told the St. Petersburg Times that a "cabal of insiders" in the U.S. government were studying recovered alien bodies, and that this group had stopped briefing U.S. Presidents after John F. Kennedy. He said, "We all know that UFOs are real; now the question is where they come from."

He was twice divorced, and he had three children as well as three stepchildren. He also had nine grandchildren.

It's sad but as the years go by we are losing more of the men who flew on the legendary Apollo missions. RIP Edgar.

Nineteen of the twenty-nine astronauts who flew on Apollo missions are still alive, including seven of the twelve who walked on the moon.

They are all now in their 80s (Charles Duke is the youngest of the survivors at 80). Buzz Aldrin is still alive at 86 as is 87 year old Jim "Houston, we've had a problem" Lovell.

Mercury astronaut John Glenn is still alive at the age of 94.