Mitchell was selected to be an astronaut in 1966 and was seconded from the Navy to NASA. He was backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 10 and flew (again as LM pilot) on Apollo 14. Together with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard he holds the record for the longest ever moonwalking session (9 hours and 17 minutes).   Apollo 14 was his only spaceflight. Ed Mitchell remained with NASA until he retired from the Navy in 1972.

Ed Mitchell was awarded honorary doctorates from the New Mexico State University, the University of Akron, Carnegie Mellon University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Mitchell was portrayed by Gary Cole in the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.

Mitchell's interests include consciousness and paranormal phenomena. During the Apollo 14 flight he conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth.   In early 1973, he founded the nonprofit Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to conduct and sponsor research into areas that mainstream science has found unproductive, including consciousnessresearch and psychic events.

REMOTE HEALING

Mitchell says that a teenage remote healer who lives in Vancouver and uses the pseudonym Adam Dreamhealer, helped him heal of kidney cancer at a distance. Mitchell said that while he never had a biopsy (the definitive test for cancer), "I had a sonogram and MRI that was consistent with renal carcinoma." Adam worked (distantly) on Mitchell from December of 2003 until June of 2004, when the "irregularity was gone and we haven't seen it since".

VIEWS ON UFOs

Mitchell has publicly expressed his opinions that he is "90 percent sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets"^[5] and that UFOs have been the "subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so the truth doesn't come out".  

Dateline NBC had an interview with Mitchell on April 19, 1996, during which he discussed meeting with officials from three countries who claimed to have had personal encounters with extraterrestrials. He offered his opinion that the evidence for such "alien" contact was "very strong" and "classified" by governments, who were covering up visitations and the existence of alien beings' bodies in places such as Roswell, New Mexico. He further claimed that UFOs had provided "sonic engineering secrets" that were helpful to the US government. Mitchell's book, The Way of the Explorer, discusses his journey into mysticism and space.

In 2004 he told the St. Petersburg Times that a "cabal of insiders" inside the US Government were studying recovered alien bodies, and that this group had stopped briefing US presidents after John F. Kennedy.  He said, "We all know that UFOs are real; now the question is, where they come from?"

On July 23, 2008 Edgar Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio by Nick Margerrison. Mitchell claimed the Roswell crash was real and that aliens have contacted humans several times but that governments have hidden the truth for 60 years stating, "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFOphenomenon is real." In reply, a spokesman for NASA stated, "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue."

In an interview with Fox News on July 25, 2008, Mitchell clarified that his comments did not involve NASA, but quoted unnamed sources, since deceased, at Roswell who confided to him that the Roswell incident did involve an alien craft. Mitchell also claims to have subsequently received confirmation from an unnamed intelligence officer at the Pentagon.

Edgar Mitchell is one of the astronauts featured in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.

Mitchell has written several articles and essays, as well as two books. In The Way of the Explorer, Mitchell proposed a dyadic model of reality.  

He is currently the Advisory Board Chairman of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, co-founded by Dr. Carol Rosin and is a member of INREES. Mitchell was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Mitchell is one of the initial supporters of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly - which would be a first step towards a "world parliament".