Edgar Mitchell

Died: February 4, 2016

DR Edgar Dean Mitchell, who has died aged 85, was a pioneering American astronaut who undertook the longest ever moon-walk when he climbed to the summit of a lunar crater in 1971.

He was one of a handful of astronauts who had the most extraordinary of careers – on his first and only spaceflight, he had the ultimate experience covering everything a trainee astronaut could hope for. He flew into Earth orbit on a giant Saturn rocket, circled the planet twice, then departed for the Moon, where he orbited, landed and made two moonwalks.

During his return flight to Earth, he had a mind-expanding experience of universal consciousness, before his capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near New Zealand.

When his Apollo 14 mission departed Earth, the three crew had only 15 minutes of spaceflight experience between them. Now their ambitious mission was to attempt a landing at the hilly Fra Mauro region, which had been the target of the aborted Apollo 13 flight, and in the process salvage the reputation of NASA after that near-disaster in which the crew narrowly escaped with their lives.

Fra Mauro was a much rougher area than the two previous landing sites, which had been on flat lunar plains. While crewmate Stu Roosa remained in lunar orbit, the landing zone for Mitchell and commander Alan Shepard was in a hummocky valley dotted with pits and giant boulders below the ridge of the 1100ft wide Cone Crater. As they descended, with the lunar surface looming ever closer, their craft experienced a series of glitches and warning lights which they managed to overcome at the last minute.

“Going by Cone Crater right outside to my right,” Mitchell calmly announced as they dropped below the ridge, flew down the valley and settled a cloud of dust exactly on the intended landing site.

After unloading experiments and a lunar ‘wheel barrow’, they walked two miles and climbed 300ft to the top of Cone Crater, thus becoming the first lunar hill-walkers. Since later missions used an electric car, the pair’s walking and climbing record still stands.

On his flight home when the crew were supposed to be sleeping, Mitchell conducted a pre-arranged experiment in extra-sensory perception (ESP) involving people on Earth, which yielded some statistically significant results. It was not appreciated by his austere and sceptical commander, Shephard – but then, he had had his own unauthorised indulgence by playing golf on the Moon.

While in space, Mitchell was swept by an intense awareness of the connectedness of himself and all of us with the rest of the universe, which guided his later career interests in the exploration of consciousness, and fuelled his frustration with small-minded, scheming politicians.

Reflecting on his view of the Earth as seen from the Moon, he said: “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'."

Mitchell was a highly intelligent, approachable and hospitable man of eclectic interests. I first met him at NASA’s Cape Canaveral launch site through work with NASA’s History Office. He was great company and enjoyed a glass of wine, whether at an art exhibition or over dinner at Fiorella’s, one of his favourite Florida restaurants.

At his home in Lake Worth where he lived with his nephew Mitch, he would proudly show visitors his lunar mementoes and his own copy of Glasgow space author David Harland’s book on lunar exploration.

With his death, only seven of the 12 humans who walked on the Moon remain.

KEN MACTAGGART