Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and the sixth human to walk on the Moon, spent the second half of his life in pursuit of a question his nine hours on the lunar surface had made unavoidable: what was the nature of consciousness?
The question arose from an experience during the return journey from the Moon. Looking out the window at the Earth, Moon, and star field, he was struck by the certainty that the universe was in some fundamental sense alive and that consciousness was a fundamental feature of reality.
He returned to Earth and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973.
In a 2015 interview released posthumously by IONS, Mitchell was asked directly about UAP: "I've been told by people who would know that the phenomenon is real, that the visitors are real, and that the contact has been ongoing for longer than most people would believe. The universe is teeming with intelligence, and we are not alone."
Mitchell died on February 4, 2016, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of Apollo 14's lunar landing.