US astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of just 12 people to have walked on the moon, has died aged 85, his family and NASA said, calling him a "pioneer."
Dr Mitchell is best remembered for helping NASA restore its
reputation after the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, the interest he developed
later in life in aliens and his conviction that they had visited earth.
He said he had undergone an
epiphany in space during the three days he spent returning to earth following
the successful Apollo 14 mission in February, 1971.
"What I experienced
during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal
connectedness," Dr Mitchell wrote in his 1996 autobiography.
"It occurred to me
that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were
manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in
the heavens about me," he wrote.
In one interview, eight
years ago, Dr Mitchell said he had been aware of several UFO visits to earth,
but insisted that they had been covered up.
He said that human
technology lacked sophistication compared with that used by aliens, adding if
the extraterrestrial visitors had been hostile "we would have been gone by
now".
In an interview with
Kerrang! Radio, he said there was life elsewhere in the universe.
"Have we been able to
identify where the other planets are?
"No, certainly not in
our Solar System but we have been able to identify quite a number of planets
that could be life-bearing planets," he said.
"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.
"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."
Prior to his voicing a
belief in extraterrestrials, Dr Mitchell had enjoyed a distinguished and not
uneventful career at NASA.
He had been picked to be a
member of the Apollo 13 three-person crew, along with Alan Shepard.
But they were stood down
until the next mission.
Apollo 13 was forced to
return to earth after an oxygen tank exploded, without the astronauts - who
were nearly killed - setting foot on the moon.
However the Apollo 14
mission was a success, with Dr Mitchell and Dr Shepard completing the
longest-ever moon walk - which lasted exactly nine hours and 17 minutes. While NASA
hailed Dr Mitchell's contribution to space exploration, it distanced itself
from his views on aliens.
"Dr Mitchell is a
great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue," NASA
said.
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