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57-403: "Ries" is derived from Raetia , since the tribe of Raetians lived in the area in pre- Roman times. The depression is a meteorite impact crater formed 14.808 ± 0.038 million years ago in the Miocene . The crater is most commonly referred to simply as Ries crater or the Ries . The original crater rim had an estimated diameter of 24 km (15 mi). The present floor of the depression

114-643: A Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1952, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. That same year, he entered the United States Navy and completed basic training at San Diego Recruit Depot . While on active duty in the Navy, he earned a second bachelor's degree , in aeronautical engineering , from

171-759: A dyadic model of reality. He was the Advisory Board Chairman of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, co-founded by Carol Rosin , and a member of INREES . Mitchell was 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". Mitchell died under hospice care in West Palm Beach, Florida , at

228-527: A "cabal of insiders" in the U.S. government were studying recovered alien bodies, and that this group had stopped briefing U.S. 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

285-503: A "commercial organization promoting ecologically-pure products and services designed to alleviate planetary problems." After moving to Atherton, California , he became founding chairman of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Palo Alto, California in 1973 for the purpose of consciousness research and other "related phenomena". "Science and religion have lived on opposite sides of

342-400: A fluidized ejecta flow after impact of the meteorite, most simply compared to a bullet fired into mud, with the ejecta resembling a mudflow . Another impact crater, the much smaller (3.8 km (2.4 mi) diameter) Steinheim crater , is located about 42 km (26 mi) west-southwest from the center of Ries. It had previously been thought that the two craters formed simultaneously by

399-463: 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

456-567: A local graphite deposit. Stone from this area was quarried and used to build the local buildings. On one edge of the Nördlinger Ries are the Ofnet Caves , where, at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered thirty-three human skulls dating to the Mesolithic period. The landing site for Apollo 14 is a heavily craterized terrain, and one of the science goals of the mission

513-438: A people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch." Mitchell's interests included consciousness and paranormal phenomena. On his way back to Earth during

570-597: A private meeting with then- Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush , who knew Mitchell socially. Although Bush demurred (citing post- Watergate investigations of the intelligence community), he suggested the pursuit of military sponsorship, leading to the formation of the Stargate Project in 1978. From 1974 to 1978, he was president of the Palm Beach, Florida -based Edgar Mitchell Corporation. In 1975, he moved to nearby Lantana, Florida , where he resided for

627-517: A sand-rich surface layer that was ejected to distances up to 450 km (280 mi) downrange of the crater. The shape of the strewnfield suggests that the direction of impact was from the west-southwest . Stone buildings in Nördlingen contain millions of tiny diamonds , all less than 0.2 mm (0.008 in) across. The impact that caused the Nördlinger Ries crater created an estimated 72,000 tonnes (72,000,000  kg ) of them when it impacted

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684-498: A teenage remote healer living in Vancouver and using the pseudonym "Adam Dreamhealer" helped him heal kidney cancer from a distance. Mitchell said that while he never had a biopsy , "I had a sonogram and MRI that was consistent with renal carcinoma ." Adam worked (distantly) on Mitchell from December 2003 until June 2004, when the "irregularity was gone and we haven't seen it since". Mitchell publicly expressed his opinions that he

741-504: A total of 216 hours and 42 minutes in space. He was subsequently designated to serve as backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 16 . During the mission, he took photos, including the one with Shepard raising the American flag. In the photo, Mitchell's shadow is cast over the lunar surface near the flag. That photo was listed on Popular Science ' s photo gallery of the best astronaut selfies . You develop an instant global consciousness,

798-482: Is about 100 to 150 m (330 to 490 ft) below the eroded remains of the rim. It was originally assumed that the Ries was of volcanic origin. In 1960 Eugene Shoemaker and Edward C. T. Chao showed that the depression was caused by meteorite impact. The key evidence was the presence of coesite , which, in unmetamorphosed rocks, can only be formed by the shock pressures associated with meteorite impact. The coesite

855-458: Is heard of them till after the end of the Republic . There is little doubt, however, that they retained their independence until their subjugation in 15 BC by Tiberius and Drusus . At first Raetia formed a distinct province, but towards the end of the 1st century AD Vindelicia was added to it; hence, Tacitus ( Germania , 41) could speak of Augusta Vindelicorum ( Augsburg ) as "a colony of

912-580: The Apollo 13 crisis, Mitchell was a part of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team and as such was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970. He worked in an Apollo simulator to help bring the crew back. One issue he worked on was how to "fly" (meaning control the attitude of ) the Lunar Module with an inert Apollo Command/Service Module attached to it. (Usually, it

969-743: The Oenus ( River Inn ). During the last years of the Western Roman Empire , the land was in a desolate condition, but its occupation by the Ostrogoths in the time of Theodoric the Great , who placed it under a dux , to some extent revived its prosperity. Much of Raetia prima remained as a separate political unit, Raetia Curiensis , for several centuries, until it was attached to the Duchy of Swabia in AD 917. The land

1026-777: The Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island , Mitchell was commissioned an Ensign . He completed flight training in July 1954 at Hutchinson, Kansas , was designated as a Naval Aviator and received the Daughters of the American Revolution Award for achieving the highest overall marks during flight training. After period of instruction from July to September 1954 at the Fleet Airborne Electronics Training Unit, U.S. Pacific Fleet , Mitchell

1083-680: The U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School and graduated first in his class. During this period, he served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates. The legacy of his post-NASA scientific and parapsychology work is carried on through the Institute of Noetic Sciences . Mitchell was born on September 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas , to Joseph Thomas Mitchell (1910–1967) and Ollidean Margaret Mitchell ( née Arnold; 1911–1977). He had three siblings: Joyce Alyene, who died in her infancy in 1933, Sandra Jo (1934–1988) and Jay Neely "Coach" (1937–2013), who

1140-569: The United States Navy in 1952. After being commissioned through the Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island , he served as a Naval Aviator . In 1961, he received his second bachelor's degree , in aeronautical engineering , from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and three years later earned his doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1965 to 1966, he attended

1197-579: The Upper Rhine and Lake Constance ), southern Germany ( Bavaria and most of Baden-Württemberg ), Vorarlberg and the greater part of Tyrol in Austria , and part of northern Lombardy in Italy . The region of Vindelicia (today eastern Württemberg and western Bavaria) was annexed to the province at a later date than the others. The northern border of Raetia during the reigns of emperors Augustus and Tiberius

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1254-424: The diocese of the vicarius Italiae , and was subdivided into Raetia prima , with a praeses at Curia Raetorum ( Chur ) and Raetia secunda , with a praeses at Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), the former corresponding to the old Raetia, the latter to Vindelicia. The boundary between them is not clearly defined, but may be stated generally as a line drawn eastwards from the lacus Brigantinus ( Lake Constance ) to

1311-638: The federal government of the United States filed a lawsuit against Mitchell in the United States district court in Miami , Florida after discovering that he placed a camera used on Apollo 14 for auction at the auction house Bonhams . The litigation requested the camera be returned to NASA. Mitchell's position was that NASA had given him the camera as a gift upon the completion of the Apollo 14 mission. Bonhams withdrew

1368-585: The psychedelic experience to his time in zero gravity, it remains unclear if his use preceded or followed Apollo 14. In 1997, Mitchell was interviewed for NASA's oral history program. In one excerpt from that, he talked about how he was drawn to the space program: After Kennedy announced the moon program, that's what I wanted, because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I've been devoted to that, to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that's what kept me going. On June 29, 2011,

1425-533: The Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful savikalpa samādhi experience, and he claimed to have conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth. The results of these experiments were published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1971. He retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy with the rank of captain in October 1972. Immediately thereafter, he founded Edgar D. Mitchell & Associates of Monterey, California ,

1482-519: The Institute of Noetic Sciences) was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a surreptitious conduit for payments to Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller while the latter was evaluated by an SRI International research group (led by Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ ) in 1972. In 1976, Mitchell attempted to secure additional funding for the SRI group's remote viewing research in

1539-473: The Mobile Equipment Transporter (MET); first successful use of color television with a new Vidicon tube; longest distance traversed on foot on the lunar surface; largest payload placed in lunar orbit; first use of shortened lunar orbit rendezvous techniques; and first extensive orbital science period conducted during CSM solo operations. In completing his first space flight, Mitchell logged

1596-621: The Pentagon . In an interview for AskMen published March 6, 2014, Mitchell said that he had never seen a UFO, that no one had ever threatened him over his claims regarding UFOs, and that any statements about the covering up of UFOs being a worldwide cabal was "just speculation on my part". In 2015, Mitchell said in an interview with the Daily Mirror that extraterrestrials "had been attempting to keep us from going to war [with Russia] and help create peace on Earth." He also said that "White Sands

1653-480: The U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961 and an Doctor of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1964. He was married to Louise Randall from 1951 to 1972. Following their divorce, he married Anita Rettig in 1973. The couple divorced in 1984 when he began an affair with former Playboy model Sheilah Ledbetter. He was father to two children with Randall, adopted Rettig's three children, and later

1710-587: The age of 85, on February 4, 2016, the eve of the 45th anniversary of his lunar landing. As Roosa and Shepard had died in the 1990s, Mitchell was the last surviving member of the Apollo 14 crew. Mitchell was a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ; the Society of Experimental Test Pilots ; Sigma Xi ; Sigma Gamma Tau , New York Academy of Sciences ; The Explorers Club ; World Futures Society; International Platform Association; and he

1767-504: The camera from auction. In October 2011, attorneys representing the government and Mitchell reached a settlement agreement, and Mitchell agreed to return the camera to NASA, which in turn would donate it for display at the National Air and Space Museum . On September 20, 2012, Congress enacted H.R. 4158, confirming full ownership rights of artifacts to astronauts on Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini ) space missions. Mitchell claimed that

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1824-687: The completion of his graduate studies, Mitchell served as Chief, Project Management Division of the Navy Field Office for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory from 1964 to 1965. From 1965 to 1966, he attended the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School for certification as a test pilot , graduating first in his class. During this period, Mitchell served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates. Mitchell accumulated 5,000 hours flight time, including 2,000 hours in jet aircraft . Mitchell

1881-433: The impact of a binary asteroid 14.8 million years ago, but a study published in 2020 suggests that Steinheim could actually be about 500,000 years younger than Nördlinger Ries. Recent computer modeling of the impact event indicates that the impactors probably had diameters of about 1.5 km (4,900 ft) (Ries) and 150 m (490 ft) (Steinheim), had a pre-impact separation of some tens of kilometers, and impacted

1938-621: The name of "Raetians" from an eponymous leader Raetus. Even if their Etruscan origin be accepted, at the time when the land became known to the Romans, Celtic tribes were already in possession of much of it and had amalgamated so completely with the original inhabitants that, generally speaking, the Raetians of later times may be regarded as a Celtic people, although non-Celtic tribes (es. Euganei ) were settled among them. The Raetians are first mentioned (but only incidentally) by Polybius , and little

1995-590: The province of Raetia". The whole province (including Vindelicia) was at first under a military prefect , then under a procurator ; it had no standing army quartered in it but relied on its own native troops and militia for protection until the 2nd century AD. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius , Raetia was governed by the commander of the Legio III Italica , which was based in Castra Regina ( Regensburg ) by 179 AD. Under Diocletian , Raetia formed part of

2052-561: The records as one of the most powerful and warlike of the Alpine tribes. Livy states distinctly that they were of Etruscan origin (a belief that was favored by Niebuhr and Mommsen ). A tradition reported by Justin and Pliny the Elder affirmed that they were a portion of that people who had settled in the plains of the Po and were driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls , when they assumed

2109-640: The rest of his life. He co-founded the Association of Space Explorers in 1983 and later served as chairman of the Mitchell Communications Company. Mitchell's heretofore undisclosed experimentation with LSD was reported by writer David Jay Brown in The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality (2013). Although he favorably compared the sensations of

2166-483: The street now for hundreds of years," Mitchell said toward the end of his life. "So here we are, in the twenty-first century, trying to put two faces of reality—the existence face and the intelligence or conscious face—into the same understanding. Body and mind, physicality and consciousness belong to the same side of reality. Journalist Annie Jacobsen has asserted that Mitchell's Mind Science Institute (a Los Angeles, California -based organization ultimately subsumed by

2223-510: The target area at an angle around 30 to 50 degrees from the surface in a west-southwest to east-northeast direction. The impact velocity is thought to have been about 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph). The resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs , an energy of roughly 2.4 × 10 joules . The Ries crater impact event is believed to be the source of moldavite tektites found in southern Bohemia and Moravia ( Czech Republic ). The tektite melt originated from

2280-506: 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 UFO phenomenon is real." In reply, a spokesman for NASA stated on the Skeptoid Podcast with Brian Dunning : "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

2337-434: Was "90 percent sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects , or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets". Dateline NBC conducted 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

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2394-521: 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 U.S. government. Mitchell's 1996 book, The Way of the Explorer , discusses his journey into mysticism and space. In 2004, he told the St. Petersburg Times that

2451-777: Was a United States Navy officer and aviator , test pilot , aeronautical engineer , ufologist , and NASA astronaut . As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971 he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region , and was the sixth person to walk on the Moon . He was the second Freemason to set foot on the Moon, after Buzz Aldrin . Before becoming an astronaut, Mitchell earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from Carnegie Institute of Technology and entered

2508-568: Was a province of the Roman Empire named after the Rhaetian people . It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii , on the east with Noricum , on the north with Vindelicia , on the south-west with Transalpine Gaul and on the south with Venetia et Histria , a region of Roman Italy . It thus comprised the districts occupied in modern times by eastern and central Switzerland (containing

2565-611: Was a member of the inaugural graduating class of the United States Air Force Academy in 1959, and a pilot with the United States Air Force (USAF), achieving the rank of colonel . He came from a ranching family that moved to New Mexico during the Depression and considered Artesia, New Mexico (near Roswell ) as his hometown. He first learned to fly at 13, receiving his private pilot license at 16, and

2622-480: Was a testing ground for atomic weapons—and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in. They wanted to know about our military capabilities." Edgar Mitchell appeared in the documentaries In the Shadow of the Moon (2007), The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone , and The Living Matrix (2009). Mitchell wrote several articles and essays as well as several books. In The Way of the Explorer , Mitchell proposed

2679-620: Was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout . He was also a member of DeMolay International , part of the Masonic Fraternity , and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. Mitchell was a member of Artesia Lodge #29 in New Mexico . He enjoyed handball , tennis , and swimming , and his hobbies included scuba diving and soaring . He graduated from Artesia High School in 1948. Mitchell received

2736-559: Was also an honorary member of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association . Mitchell's other awards included: In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon , Mitchell was played by Gary Cole . He was the subject of a chapter of Chris Wright's book No More Worlds to Conquer , which asks how people who are famed for one moment moved on with their life. In it he talked at length about his beliefs in extraterrestrial visitation,

2793-518: Was father to another child, this time with Ledbetter. Rettig served as chair of the Palm Beach County Republican Party , while Kimberly Mitchell (the eldest daughter from his union with Rettig) was a city commissioner in West Palm Beach, Florida . Ledbetter and Mitchell married in 1989 and divorced in 1999. He was survived by five children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. In May 1953, after completing instruction at

2850-471: Was found in suevite from Otting quarry, but even before, Shoemaker was encouraged by St. George's Church in Nördlingen , which is built of locally derived suevite. The suevite was formed from mesozoic sediments shocked by the bolide impact. The Ries impact crater was a rampart crater , thus far a unique finding on Earth. Rampart craters have almost exclusively been found on Mars . Rampart craters exhibit

2907-451: Was selected in 1966 as part of NASA's fifth astronaut group . He was assigned to the support crew for Apollo 9 , then was designated as backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10 . This placed him in rotation for Apollo 13, but his crew was switched to Apollo 14 so that Commander Alan Shepard , who had been grounded by a medical problem since the Gemini program , could train longer. During

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2964-519: Was subsequently assigned to Patrol Squadron 29 ( VP-29 ), flying land-based patrol planes, deployed to Okinawa . From 1957 to 1958, Mitchell transitioned to carrier-based jet aircraft and flew the A3D Skywarrior while assigned to Heavy Attack Squadron Two (VAH-2) deployed aboard the aircraft carriers USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Ticonderoga . He qualified as a research pilot and flew with Air Development Squadron Five until 1959. Following

3021-782: Was the River Danube . Later the Limes Germanicus marked the northern boundary, stretching for 166 km north of the Danube. Raetia was connected to Italy across the Alps over the Reschen Pass , by the Via Claudia Augusta . The capital of the province was Augusta Vindelicorum , present-day Augsburg in southern Germany. Little is known of the origin or history of the Raetians , who appear in

3078-516: Was the other way around, but the Service Module was damaged during that mission.) He then went to serve as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14, landing with Shepard aboard the Lunar Module Antares on February 5, 1971, in the hilly upland Fra Mauro Highlands region of the Moon. They stayed on the Moon for 33 hours, deployed and activated lunar surface scientific equipment and experiments, and collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth. Other Apollo 14 achievements include: only use of

3135-633: Was to sample ejecta from the impact that formed Mare Imbrium . Nördlinger Ries is an easily accessible, large impact crater, making it a convenient analog for lunar craters. Because of this, it was used as a location to train Apollo 14 astronauts, so that they would be able to investigate lunar impact structures and related rocks. Astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell , as well as Apollo 14 backup astronauts Eugene Cernan and Joe Engle , trained here from August 10 to August 14, 1970. Raetia Raetia or Rhaetia ( / ˈ r iː ʃ ( i ) ə / REE -sh(ee-)ə , Latin: [ˈrae̯.ti.a] )

3192-582: Was traversed by two great lines of Roman roads: the Via Claudia Augusta leading from Verona and Tridentum across the Reschen Pass to the Fern Pass and thence to Augusta Vindelicorum ( Augsburg ), the other from Brigantium ( Bregenz ) on Lake Constance by Chur and Chiavenna to Como and Milan . The Rätikon mountain range derives its name from Raetia. 47°21′36″N 8°33′36″E  /  47.3600°N 8.5600°E  / 47.3600; 8.5600 Edgar Mitchell Edgar Dean "Ed" Mitchell (September 17, 1930 – February 4, 2016)

3249-544: Was very mountainous, and the inhabitants, when not engaged in predatory expeditions, chiefly supported themselves by breeding cattle and cutting timber, little attention being paid to agriculture. Some of the valleys, however, were rich and fertile, and produced wine, which was considered equal to any in Italia . Augustus preferred Raetian wine to any other. Considerable trade in pitch , honey , wax , and cheese occurred. The chief towns of Raetia (excluding Vindelicia) were Tridentum ( Trento ) and Curia (Coire or Chur ). It

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