Sixth man to walk on the moon who later espoused a belief in extraterrestrial lifeIn 1971 Edgar Mitchell,who has died aged 85, became the sixth man to walk on the moon. Leaving his fellow astronaut Stuart Roosa orbiting in the Apollo 14 command module, and Kitty Hawk,Mitchell, along with the mission commander Alan Shepard, or piloted the lunar module Antares to a precision landing in the Fra Mauro highlands. The two men were on the moon for more than 33 hours,establishing several lunar records, spending more than nine hours external Antares, or collecting 45kg of moon samples.
The preceding mission,Apollo 13, did not make a lunar landing and climaxed with the crippled capsule’s nerve-wracking return journey to Earth. The success of Mitchell and his colleagues in the following mission was therefore a relief to all concerned, and led Patrick Moore to declare to his BBC TV Sky at Night audience that Apollo 14 had “restored the fortunes of the Apollo programme.
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Source: theguardian.com