Edgar Mitchell
Edgar Dean Mitchell was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist, and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971 he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region, and was the sixth person to walk on the Moon. He was the second Freemason to set foot on the Moon, after Buzz Aldrin.
Before becoming an astronaut, Mitchell earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from Carnegie Institute of Technology and entered the United States Navy in 1952. After being commissioned through the Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island, he served as a Naval Aviator. In 1961, he received his second bachelor's degree, in aeronautical engineering, from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and three years later earned his doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1965 to 1966, he attended the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School and graduated first in his class. During this period, he served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates.
The legacy of his post-NASA scientific and parapsychology work is carried on through the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
Early life and education
Mitchell was born on September 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas, to Joseph Thomas Mitchell and Ollidean Margaret Mitchell. He had three siblings: Joyce Alyene, who died in her infancy in 1933, Sandra Jo and Jay Neely "Coach", who was a member of the inaugural graduating class of the United States Air Force Academy in 1959, and a pilot with the United States Air Force, achieving the rank of colonel. He came from a ranching family that moved to New Mexico during the Depression and considered Artesia, New Mexico as his hometown. He first learned to fly at 13, receiving his private pilot license at 16, and was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. He was also a member of DeMolay International, part of the Masonic Fraternity, and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. Mitchell was a member of Artesia Lodge #29 in New Mexico. He enjoyed handball, tennis, and swimming, and his hobbies included scuba diving and soaring.He graduated from Artesia High School in 1948. Mitchell received a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1952, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. That same year, he entered the United States Navy and completed basic training at San Diego Recruit Depot. While on active duty in the Navy, he earned a second bachelor's degree, in aeronautical engineering, from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961 and a Doctor of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964.
Flight experience
In May 1953, after completing instruction at the Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island, Mitchell was commissioned an Ensign. He completed flight training in July 1954 at Hutchinson, Kansas, was designated as a Naval Aviator and received the Daughters of the American Revolution Award for achieving the highest overall marks during flight training. After period of instruction from July to September 1954 at the Fleet Airborne Electronics Training Unit, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Mitchell was subsequently assigned to Patrol Squadron 29, flying land-based patrol planes, deployed to Okinawa.From 1957 to 1958, Mitchell transitioned to carrier-based jet aircraft and flew the A3D Skywarrior while assigned to Heavy Attack Squadron Two deployed aboard the aircraft carriers USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Ticonderoga. He qualified as a research pilot and flew with Air Development Squadron Five until 1959. Following the completion of his graduate studies, Mitchell served as Chief, Project Management Division of the Navy Field Office for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory from 1964 to 1965. From 1965 to 1966, he attended the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School for certification as a test pilot, graduating first in his class. During this period, Mitchell served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates.
Mitchell accumulated 5,000 hours flight time, including 2,000 hours in jet aircraft.
NASA career
Mitchell was selected in 1966 as part of NASA's fifth astronaut group. He was assigned to the support crew for Apollo 9, then was designated as backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10. This placed him in rotation for Apollo 13, but his crew was switched to Apollo 14 so that Commander Alan Shepard, who had been grounded by a medical problem since the Gemini program, could train longer.During the Apollo 13 crisis, Mitchell was a part of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team and as such was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970. He worked in an Apollo simulator to help bring the crew back. One issue he worked on was how to "fly" the Lunar Module with an inert Apollo Command/Service Module attached to it.
He then went to serve as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14, landing with Shepard aboard the Lunar Module Antares on February 5, 1971, in the hilly upland Fra Mauro Highlands region of the Moon. They stayed on the Moon for 33 hours, deployed and activated lunar surface scientific equipment and experiments, and collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth. Other Apollo 14 achievements include: only use of the Mobile Equipment Transporter ; first successful use of color television with a new Vidicon tube; longest distance traversed on foot on the lunar surface; largest payload placed in lunar orbit; first use of shortened lunar orbit rendezvous techniques; and first extensive orbital science period conducted during CSM solo operations.
In completing his first space flight, Mitchell logged a total of 216 hours and 42 minutes in space. He was subsequently designated to serve as backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 16.
During the mission, he took photos, including the one with Shepard raising the American flag. In the photo, Mitchell's shadow is cast over the lunar surface near the flag. That photo was listed on Popular Sciences photo gallery of the best astronaut selfies.
Post-NASA career
Mitchell's interests included consciousness and paranormal phenomena. On his way back to Earth during the Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful savikalpa samādhi experience, and he claimed to have conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth. The results of these experiments were published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1971.He retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy with the rank of captain in October 1972. Immediately thereafter, he founded Edgar D. Mitchell & Associates of Monterey, California, a "commercial organization promoting ecologically-pure products and services designed to alleviate planetary problems."
After moving to Atherton, California, he became founding chairman of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto, California in 1973 for the purpose of consciousness research and other "related phenomena". "Science and religion have lived on opposite sides of the street now for hundreds of years," Mitchell said toward the end of his life. "So here we are, in the twenty-first century, trying to put two faces of reality—the existence face and the intelligence or conscious face—into the same understanding. Body and mind, physicality and consciousness belong to the same side of reality.
Journalist Annie Jacobsen has asserted that Mitchell's Mind Science Institute was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency as a surreptitious conduit for payments to Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller while the latter was evaluated by an SRI International research group in 1972. In 1976, Mitchell attempted to secure additional funding for the SRI group's remote viewing research in a private meeting with then-Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, who knew Mitchell socially. Although Bush demurred, he suggested the pursuit of military sponsorship, leading to the formation of the Stargate Project in 1978.
From 1974 to 1978, he was president of the Palm Beach, Florida-based Edgar Mitchell Corporation. In 1975, he moved to nearby Lantana, Florida, where he resided for the rest of his life. He co-founded the Association of Space Explorers in 1983 and later served as chairman of the Mitchell Communications Company.
Mitchell's heretofore undisclosed experimentation with LSD was reported by writer David Jay Brown in The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality. Although he favorably compared the sensations of the psychedelic experience to his time in zero gravity, it remains unclear if his use preceded or followed Apollo 14.
In 1997, Mitchell was interviewed for NASA's oral history program. In one excerpt from that, he talked about how he was drawn to the space program:
On June 29, 2011, the federal government of the United States filed a lawsuit against Mitchell in the United States district court in Miami, Florida after discovering that he placed a camera used on Apollo 14 for auction at the auction house Bonhams. The litigation requested the camera be returned to NASA. Mitchell's position was that NASA had given him the camera as a gift upon the completion of the Apollo 14 mission. Bonhams withdrew the camera from auction. In October 2011, attorneys representing the government and Mitchell reached a settlement agreement, and Mitchell agreed to return the camera to NASA, which in turn would donate it for display at the National Air and Space Museum. On September 20, 2012, Congress enacted H.R. 4158, confirming full ownership rights of artifacts to astronauts on Apollo space missions.