Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 85, NASA said on Friday.
Mitchell, the lunar module pilot on the record-setting Apollo 14 mission, died in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday, the eve of the 45th anniversary of the 1971 lunar landing, the U.S. space agency said. The Palm Beach Post reported that he died at a hospice center after a brief illness.
On his only space flight, Mitchell joined Apollo 14 commander Alan Shephard Jr., the first American in space, in the lunar module Antares when it landed on Feb. 5, 1971.