MITCHELL, EDGAR D(EAN)

born Sept. 17, 1930, Hereford, Texas, U.S. American astronaut who took part in the Apollo 14 mission (Jan. 31Feb. 10, 1971), in which the uplands region north of the Fra Mauro crater on the Moon was explored by Mitchell and Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Mitchell entered the U.S. Navy upon graduation from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pa. He was awarded an engineering degree by the Navy Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., in 1961 and a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. He joined the manned space program in 1966. He retired from the Navy and the space program in 1972, and, interested in parapsychology, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto, Calif.