Edgar Dean Mitchell (born 1930) became the sixth person to walk on the surface of the moon during the third manned moon mission, Apollo 14. With him on the surface was Alan B. Shepard, who had made history in 1961 as the first American in space. The two landed on the moon aboard Apollo 14's lunar module Antares in February 1971, while crewmate Stuart A. Roosa orbited the moon aboard the mission's command module Kitty Hawk.

Born in Hereford, Texas, on September 17, 1930, Edgar Dean Mitchell grew up in the southwest, attending elementary school in Roswell, New Mexico, a town that would later become famous for its UFO sightings. His father was a rancher, his mother a fundamentalist Baptist. Mitchell learned to fly an airplane when he was just 13 years old, even before attending high school in Artesia, New Mexico. Artesia, where he spent his teenage years, was the city he thereafter considered...