Edgar Mitchell

2.1. Childhood and family background

Mitchell was born on September 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas. His parents were Joseph Thomas Mitchell (1910-1967) and Ollidean Margaret Mitchell (née Arnold; 1911-1977). He had three siblings: Joyce Alyene, who died in infancy in 1933, Sandra Jo (1934-1988), and Jay Neely "Coach" (1937-2013). Jay, his younger brother, was a member of the inaugural graduating class of the United States Air Force Academy in 1959 and served as a pilot with the United States Air Force (USAF), achieving the rank of colonel. Mitchell came from a ranching family that relocated to New Mexico during the Great Depression, and he regarded Artesia, New Mexico (located near Roswell) as his hometown. He developed an early passion for aviation, learning to fly at the age of 13 and receiving his private pilot license at 16. During his youth, Mitchell was an active member of the Boy Scouts of America, where he attained the rank of Life Scout, the organization's second-highest achievement. He was also a member of DeMolay International, an appendant body of the Masonic Fraternity, and was later inducted into its Hall of Fame. Mitchell was a member of Artesia Lodge #29 in New Mexico. For leisure, he enjoyed handball, tennis, and swimming, and his hobbies included scuba diving and soaring.

2.2. Education and academic achievements

Mitchell graduated from Artesia High School in 1948. He pursued higher education, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1952. During his time there, he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. That same year, he joined the United States Navy and completed basic training at San Diego Recruit Depot.

While serving on active duty in the Navy, he continued his academic pursuits, earning a second bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961. He further advanced his education by obtaining a Doctor of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1964.

2.3. Navy service and pilot career

In May 1953, after completing instruction at the Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island, Mitchell was commissioned as an Ensign. He completed flight training in July 1954 at Hutchinson, Kansas, where he was designated as a Naval Aviator. For achieving the highest overall marks during flight training, he received the Daughters of the American Revolution Award. Following a period of instruction from July to September 1954 at the Fleet Airborne Electronics Training Unit, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Mitchell was assigned to Patrol Squadron 29 (VP-29). With VP-29, he flew land-based patrol planes and was deployed to Okinawa.

From 1957 to 1958, Mitchell transitioned to carrier-based jet aircraft. He flew the A3D Skywarrior while assigned to Heavy Attack Squadron Two (VAH-2), which was 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. After completing his graduate studies, Mitchell served as Chief of the 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 to become a certified test pilot, graduating first in his class. During this time, Mitchell also served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates. Throughout his career, Mitchell accumulated 5,000 hours of flight time, including 2,000 hours in jet aircraft.

3.1. Astronaut selection and preparation

Mitchell was selected in 1966 as part of NASA's fifth astronaut group. His initial assignments included serving on the support crew for Apollo 9. He was then designated as the backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10. This progression typically would have placed him in rotation for the Apollo 13 mission; however, his crew was ultimately switched to Apollo 14. This change was made to allow Commander Alan Shepard, who had been grounded due to a medical problem since the Gemini program, more time for training.

During the critical Apollo 13 crisis in 1970, Mitchell was an integral part of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team. His contributions to the effort to bring the crew back safely earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Richard M. Nixon. Specifically, he worked extensively in an Apollo simulator, helping to determine how to control the attitude of the Lunar Module when it was attached to an inert and damaged Apollo Command/Service Module. This was a unique challenge as the usual procedure involved the Service Module controlling the Lunar Module.

3.2. Apollo 14 mission

Mitchell's sole spaceflight was as the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14. He landed with Commander Alan Shepard aboard the Lunar Module Antares on February 5, 1971, in the hilly upland Fra Mauro Highlands region of the Moon. They remained on the lunar surface for 33 hours, during which they deployed and activated lunar surface scientific equipment and experiments, and collected nearly 100 lb ^{(100 lb)} of lunar samples for return to Earth.

Other significant achievements of the Apollo 14 mission included: the only use of the Mobile Equipment Transporter (MET), a two-wheeled cart designed to carry tools and samples across the lunar surface; the first successful use of color television equipped with a new Vidicon tube, which greatly enhanced the quality of broadcasts from the Moon; the longest distance traversed on foot on the lunar surface; the largest payload placed in lunar orbit; the first use of shortened lunar orbit rendezvous techniques; and the first extensive orbital science period conducted during the Command/Service Module (CSM) solo operations, after the lunar module had departed. During his time on the Moon, Mitchell took numerous photographs, including one iconic image of Shepard raising the American flag, where Mitchell's own shadow is cast prominently over the lunar surface near the flag. This photo was later featured in Popular Science magazine's gallery of the "best astronaut selfies."

3.3. Spaceflight experience and the 'overview effect'

Upon completing his first and only space flight, Mitchell logged a total of 216 hours and 42 minutes in space. Following Apollo 14, he was designated to serve as the backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 16.

During his return journey to Earth on the Apollo 14 flight, Mitchell reported a profound psychological experience, which he described as a savikalpa samādhi. This experience is akin to what is commonly referred to as the "overview effect"-a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts when viewing Earth from space, leading to a feeling of interconnectedness and a deeper appreciation for the planet. Mitchell famously articulated this experience, stating, "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 son of a bitch.'"

4.1. Founding and activities of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)

Mitchell retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy with the rank of captain in October 1972. Immediately following his retirement, he founded Edgar D. Mitchell & Associates in Monterey, California, a "commercial organization promoting ecologically-pure products and services designed to alleviate planetary problems." After relocating to Atherton, California, Mitchell became the founding chairman of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Palo Alto, California, which he established in 1973. The primary purpose of IONS was to conduct research into consciousness and other "related phenomena." Mitchell expressed his vision for the institute, stating towards the end of his life, "Science and religion have lived on opposite sides of the street now for hundreds of years... 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 asserted that Mitchell's Mind Science Institute, an organization based in Los Angeles, California, which was eventually subsumed by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, was purportedly used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This alleged arrangement served as a clandestine channel for payments to Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller during the period in 1972 when Geller was being evaluated by an SRI International research group, led by Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ. In 1976, Mitchell reportedly attempted to secure additional funding for the SRI group's remote viewing research during a private meeting with then-Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, whom Mitchell knew socially. Although Bush declined the request, citing post-Watergate investigations of the intelligence community, he suggested the pursuit of military sponsorship. This indirectly led to the formation of the Stargate Project in 1978, an intelligence program that investigated psychic phenomena.

From 1974 to 1978, Mitchell served as president of the Palm Beach, Florida-based Edgar Mitchell Corporation. In 1975, he moved to nearby Lantana, Florida, where he resided for the remainder of his life. He also co-founded the Association of Space Explorers in 1983 and later held the position of chairman of the Mitchell Communications Company. In a 1997 interview for NASA's oral history program, Mitchell reflected on his motivation for joining the space program, stating, "After Kennedy announced the moon program, that's what I wanted, because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I've been devoted to that, to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that's what kept me going."

4.2. Research on consciousness, parapsychology, and spirituality

Mitchell's profound experience during his spaceflight sparked his lifelong interest in consciousness and paranormal phenomena. While en route back to Earth during the Apollo 14 mission, he claimed to have conducted private ESP experiments with friends on Earth. The alleged results of these experiments were later published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1971. His 1996 book, The Way of the Explorer, chronicles his personal journey into mysticism and space, in which he proposed a dyadic model of reality, aiming to bridge the material and mystical worlds. Mitchell served as the Advisory Board Chairman of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, co-founded by Carol Rosin, and was also a member of the INREES (Institute for Research of Extraordinary Experiences), an organization focused on researching extraordinary human experiences.

4.3. Views on UFOs and extraterrestrial life

Edgar Mitchell became a vocal proponent of the belief in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, often asserting that governments had suppressed evidence of their existence.

4.3.1. Claims about UFOs and alien contact

Mitchell publicly stated his strong conviction, asserting he was "90 percent sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets." He appeared in a 1996 interview on Dateline NBC, where he claimed to have met with officials from three different countries who asserted they had personal encounters with extraterrestrials. Mitchell opined that the evidence for such "alien" contact was "very strong" and had been "classified" by governments. He further claimed that UFOs had provided "sonic engineering secrets" that proved beneficial to the U.S. government. According to Mitchell, these extraterrestrial beings are typically small with large heads and eyes, and are friendly towards humanity, suggesting that if they were hostile, humans would no longer exist. On July 23, 2008, during an interview on Kerrang Radio, Mitchell reiterated his belief that the Roswell crash was a genuine event involving alien craft and that aliens had contacted humans multiple times. He declared, "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real." In an interview for AskMen published on March 6, 2014, Mitchell clarified that he had never personally seen a UFO. In 2015, Mitchell stated in an interview with the Daily Mirror that extraterrestrials "had been attempting to keep us from going to war [with Russia]] and help create peace on Earth." He also claimed that "White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons-and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in. They wanted to know about our military capabilities."

4.4. Remote healing and other projects

Beyond his work on consciousness and UFOs, Mitchell was involved in other unique endeavors and public statements.

7.1. Awards and honors

Mitchell received numerous awards and honors throughout his distinguished career:

• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1970)
• Manned Spacecraft Center Superior Achievement Award (1970)
• City of New York Gold Medal (1971)
• Arnold Air Society's John F. Kennedy Award (1971)
• Navy Astronaut Wings
• Navy Distinguished Service Medal
• NASA Distinguished Service Medal
• Air Medal
• National Defense Service Medal with bronze star
• China Service Medal
• Three NASA Group Achievement Awards
• Inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame (1979)
• Inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame on October 4, 1997, alongside 24 other Apollo astronauts.

He was also awarded honorary doctorates from:

• New Mexico State University (1971)
• Carnegie-Mellon University (1971)
• University of Akron (1979)
• Embry-Riddle University (1996)

Further recognitions included:

• American Astronautical Society's Flight Achievement Award
• Carnegie Mellon University Alumni, Outstanding Man of the Year (1972)
• Kappa Sigma, Man of the Year Award (1972)
• Adventurers Club, Gold Medal Award for Exploration
• Drexel University, Engineering and Science Award for Explorations in Consciousness (1974)
• The Explorers Club, Lowell Thomas Award for Explorations in Human Consciousness (1980)

Mitchell was a member of several professional organizations, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; the Society of Experimental Test Pilots; Sigma Xi; Sigma Gamma Tau; the New York Academy of Sciences; The Explorers Club; World Futures Society; and the International Platform Association. He was also an honorary member of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association.

7.2. Criticism and controversy

Mitchell's public statements regarding UFOs, extraterrestrial life, and parapsychology drew significant criticism and controversy, particularly from mainstream scientific communities and official government agencies. NASA explicitly distanced itself from his claims, with a spokesman stating in 2008, "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." Mitchell himself later admitted that some of his statements about a "worldwide cabal" covering up UFOs were "just speculation on my part."

Beyond his controversial views, Mitchell was also involved in a public confrontation documented in the 2004 documentary Astronauts Gone Wild. In a climactic scene from the film, after filmmaker Bart Sibrel questioned Mitchell about various aspects of footage from the Apollo 11 mission, Mitchell and his son reportedly threatened Sibrel and his assistant.

7.3. Impact on society and science

Despite the controversies surrounding his post-NASA pursuits, Mitchell left an indelible mark on various fields. His founding of the Institute of Noetic Sciences established a formal platform for scientific inquiry into consciousness, parapsychology, and the integration of science with spiritual perspectives. His public advocacy for extraterrestrial life and government transparency on UFOs significantly influenced public discourse on these topics, contributing to the broader ufology movement. While his views were often at odds with conventional science, his unique journey from lunar explorer to a proponent of radical new ideas about reality broadened the conversation about human potential and the nature of existence.