Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man on the moon and one among just 12 human beings who have walked on the moon, passed away on Thursday night at the age of 85, his former wife Anita Mitchell has confirmed. Mitchell died at a West Palm Beach hospice following a brief illness.

The death coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission, which ran from January 31 to February 9, 1971.

Mitchell along with Alan Shepard had helped NASA recover from Apollo 13’s “successful failure” and later he devoted his life to exploring the mind, physics and unexplained phenomena such as aliens.

In a condolence message, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressed his condolences to the bereaved family and friends of Mitchell.

An atypical strait-laced astronaut, Mitchell had once claimed that aliens existed, and that they even visited Earth. During his Apollo mission, he even made attempts to communicate telepathically with friends at home.

In his 1996 autobiography, Mitchell wrote, “What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me”.

Since childhood, he was passionate about exploring the universe, a factor that led him to become an astronaut. After joining NASA in 1966, he assisted in designing and testing the modules that first reached the moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

But it was Shepard, the first US citizen who entered the space in 1961, who chose Mitchell to be part of Apollo 13’s three-member crew. But due to some reasons, they had to wait for the next mission — Apollo 14.