Edgar Mitchell was an American naval aviator1 and NASA astronaut who flew as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14.2 He piloted the lunar module during the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission on 1971-02-05, becoming the sixth man to walk on the Moon.3 He held a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)4 and was later named a Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree.5 He grew up in the Roswell area, the site of the 1947 Roswell incident.6 According to Luis Elizondo, Mitchell’s family was among the Roswell families threatened by the FBI after the 1947 crash.7
On the journey home from the Moon, Mitchell saw the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, and the whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens through his cockpit window every two minutes, an experience he described as powerful and overwhelming.8 He recounted realising that the molecules of his own body, the spacecraft and his crewmates had been formed in an ancient generation of stars, producing an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness,9 an experience accompanied by ecstasy that he described as an insight and an epiphany.10 The experience was profound enough to change the direction of his life:11 he returned to Earth and read extensively on the subject of consciousness,12 eventually finding it described in the Sanskrit literature of ancient India,13 and concluding that it matched descriptions of samadhi, particularly Savikalpa samadhi.14 Following this, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)15 and Quantrek,16 organisations dedicated to the study of consciousness and energy.17 He went on to develop the quantum hologram theory of physics and consciousness (QHTC),18 and, according to religious studies scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka, a dyadic model of consciousness intended to explain remote viewing, telepathy and extraordinary mystical experiences such as his own.19
Mitchell was a practitioner of remote viewing.20 Pasulka reported that he conducted remote-viewing experiments in space during his Apollo lunar mission, unsanctioned by NASA21 and kept secret.22 Pasulka met Mitchell on two occasions,23 including a Skype session with a small group of researchers she had organised in California,24 and found that, like other scientists she had interviewed, he had been involved with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).25 She wrote that the transition back to Earth had been difficult for Mitchell, a feeling also expressed by Tyler D. after his own space launches,26 and considered Mitchell part of a hidden, unofficial history of the American space programme that she associated with Tyler D. and others who believed nonhuman beings had helped humans achieve spaceflight.27 Mitchell co-founded the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters (FREE) together with Rey Hernandez, Harvard astrophysicist Rudy Schild and researcher Mary Rodwell.28 Schild put Hernandez in touch with Mitchell by phone,29 and the two found they lived close to one another and arranged to meet.30 Hernandez has said that Mitchell described to him his personal “awakening” in space,31 and that Mitchell and Schild together helped him understand the quantum hologram theory.32 Mitchell offered to help Hernandez set up the new organisation,33 whose motto, according to Hernandez, became “Disclosure from the Bottom Up” because Mitchell believed a study focused on the experiencer was important.34
In April 1997, Mitchell’s renown as an astronaut opened the way to an extraordinary briefing with the Deputy Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Wilson.35 Together with Steven Greer and Willard Miller, Mitchell gave a talk in a Pentagon conference room attended by Admiral Mike Crawford and General Patrick Hughes, an episode later set out in The Admiral Wilson Memo.36 On 1997-04-10, Greer, Miller and Mitchell presented Wilson with what they were convinced was strong witness evidence supporting their belief that the US government was covering up alien visitations, recovered spacecraft and alien bodies, and derived technological breakthroughs.37 Mitchell later confirmed to friends that the meeting had happened as Greer described it,38 and Eric Davis said that Mitchell only told him about the episode in 1999.39 Steven Lovekin, Shari Adamiak, Mitchell and Miller all backed Greer’s account of the meeting.40 Two months later, in 1997-06, Mitchell wrote a fax to Senator Strom Thurmond;41 he told Thurmond privately that he was convinced Philip Corso’s account of the Roswell incident was true.42 Mitchell was long a proponent of research into UAPs and served on the science advisory board of the National Institute for Discovery Science, retaining some of its confidential research reports from Skinwalker and other sites visited by the organisation’s investigators.43 Robert Bigelow, who funded the institute, had invited Mitchell to serve on its advisory board.44
Mitchell knew Richard C. Hoagland from his NASA days.45 During a 1996 debate with Mitchell on the radio programme Coast to Coast AM, Hoagland said he considered that the distant lunar ruins he described might have been very faint and further filtered by the gold visors worn by astronauts on the lunar surface.46 After the broadcast, Hoagland promised to send Mitchell additional material to review, and Mitchell agreed to a follow-up programme;47 Hoagland sent the material as promised, but Mitchell never responded and the follow-up never took place.48 One frame from the mission, AS14-66-9301 “Mitchell Under Glass” (Apollo 14 photograph), shows Mitchell photographed by Alan Shepard as he deployed the television camera at the start of the mission’s first lunar extra-vehicular activity, on 1971-02-05.49 Hoagland said he found that the image of Mitchell used in a golf-shot photograph published in Alan Shepard’s book Moon Shot50 had been cut out and reversed from the AS14-66-9301 frame.51
During the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell took part in NASA’s light-flash experiment, describing cosmic ray visual phenomena (light flashes) as streaks moving across his field of view from one direction to another52 and, separately, as a “nova” phenomenon: a blob that started and then expanded, becoming more diffused over time.53 He reported 12 light flashes in his right eye and 6 in his left,54 and recalled one flash that was silver, blue-white in colour, like a blue diamond.55 He said there was hardly any night during the mission when he did not see at least some light flashes, with the possible exception of time spent on the lunar surface.56 Mitchell publicly maintained that in all his space travels he never saw a UFO.57 According to a close friend known as The Spaceman, Mitchell privately confided that he had seen anomalous objects during Apollo 14 that he could not explain,58 including well-defined blue lights that appeared to have structure behind them;59 he dismissed the possibility that the lights were lens flares, reflections inside the lunar module or camera glitches, because he had seen them with his own eyes and later confirmed they appeared on film.60 The Spaceman said Mitchell told no one about the blue lights until confiding in him in the final months before his death,61 and that when asked why he always denied seeing UFOs, Mitchell would only reply with the single word “Treason”.62 In those final months, The Spaceman said, Mitchell also confided that he believed every Apollo mission was closely watched by intelligently guided craft of unknown origin, though he could not scientifically prove it.63 Mitchell died of cancer at his home in Florida on 2016-02-04, one day before the 45th anniversary of his Moon landing.64 After his death, his nephew Mitch Harkins, who had been living in Mitchell’s home, took possession of several boxes of Mitchell’s UAP and paranormal research files,65 and ensured that the most sensitive material was preserved and passed on to The Spaceman.66 James Rigney, who briefly met Mitchell in 2012 at the 40th anniversary celebrations of Apollo 17, the final Apollo mission,67 later clashed with members of his local space research association over their criticism of Mitchell’s post-NASA work investigating unidentified aerospace and paranormal phenomena.68