Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut Who Believed In Alien Life, Dies At 85

Edgar Mitchell, a former NASA astronaut who walked on the moon in 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 crew and later spoke strongly about his beliefs in UFOs and the supernatural, died Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was 85.

All told, Mitchell logged impressive extra-Earth totals: more than nine days in space; 33 hours, 31 minutes on the moon; and 9 hours, 17 minutes outside of the module, standing, walking and conducting experiments on the lunar surface.

News of his death came Friday, 45 years to the day that Apollo 14 touched down on the moon.

Mitchell often spoke of his return journey back to Earth with a profound sense of awe, wonder and togetherness and said he was inspired to investigate body-mind interactions, extrasensory perception and alleged alien encounters.

“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,” Mitchell once said.

“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 son of a bitch.’”

Mitchell was born in Hereford, Texas, grew up in Artesia, New Mexico, and began his career in the Navy, where he logged more than 5,000 hours of flight time, including 2,000 hours in jets, according to NASA.

He was the backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 10 and the lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, the first human mission back to the moon since the near-disaster of Apollo 13.

Mitchell became the sixth person in human history to walk on the moon, where he and Alan Shepard collected nearly 100 pounds of samples to bring back to Earth. The mission was also the first to use color TV on the moon, according to NASA.

But perhaps more intriguing than his experience with the Apollo mission were his beliefs and statements made after he came back to Earth.

“I had a non-local feeling that there is something here I don’t understand, even though I know about galactic formation, how the stars and elements were formed and so on,” he said in an interview with Cabinet Magazine.

“I felt a part of it. It was my molecules. It was real, abstract sensation. That insight set the tone for my last 30 years.”

Mitchell has said that he conducted ESP experiments in the spacecraft while traveling to the moon, where he would try to telepathically send numbers and other information back to people on Earth using only his brain.

“I did this when I was ready to go to sleep at night,” he told Cabinet. “We had sleeping-bag hammocks that we would put underneath the couches. Two of us would go to sleep in a hammock while the other one would be on watch. I would do the experiment before going into my sleeping bag.”

He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a nonprofit that studies “potentials and powers of consciousness, exploring phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor.”

Mitchell also regularly made claims that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial life.

“I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomena is real,” he said in a 2008 radio interview.

“It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out, and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes, we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit.”

NASA refuted the claims, saying, “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.”

He is survived by his two daughters, Karlyn Mitchell and Elizabeth Kendall; his adopted children, Kimberly Mitchell, Paul Mitchell and Mary Beth Johnson; nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild, according to CollectSpace.

Image: Edgar Mitchell on the moon, via NASA