US astronaut Edgar Mitchell – the sixth man to walk on the moon and only one of 12 who ever achieved the feat – has died aged 85.  As part of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, he spent more than nine hours on the Moon conducting experiments. He said he had undergone an epiphany in space and in later life revealed a belief that aliens had visited Earth.

Source NASA

Mr Mitchell’s mission to the Moon was the fourth in the US Apollo series, and the first to follow the ill-fated Apollo 13 which aborted its attempt to land after an oxygen tank explosion. Mr Mitchell and his crewmate, another Navy officer, Captain Alan Shepard, made it safely to the lunar surface. Their landing site was the Fra Mauro Highlands, a hilly area that was the target of the failed Apollo 13 mission.

During their 33 hours at the site, the two astronauts collected 45kg (94lb) of Moonrock for examination back on earth and completed the longest moonwalk in history. Mr Mitchell left Nasa in 1972 and set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which aimed to support “individual and collective transformation through consciousness research”. Mr Mitchell devoted much of his later life to studying the mind and unexplained phenomena. In 2008, he claimed that aliens had visited Earth and said he believed there was a government cover-up.

Of the 12 men who have set foot on the Moon, seven are still alive following Mr Mitchell’s death, including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong’s crewmate on the first mission in 1969.