Edgar Mitchell, sixth man on the Moon, dies at age 85

US space explorer Edgar Mitchell, who was the 6th man to stroll on the Moon, has kicked the bucket matured 85.

He passed away at a hospice in West Palm Beach, Florida, his family said.

As a major aspect of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, he spent over nine hours on the Moon's surface.

He said he had an "epiphany" in space and later dedicated his life to considering the psyche and unexplained wonders. He said he trusted that outsiders had gone to Earth.

"That was a mind-boggling feeling of unity, of connectedness," he said in a meeting years after the Apollo 14 three-man mission.

"It wasn't them and us, it was, 'That is me. That is every last bit of it. It's one thing.'"

Mitchell left the US space organization Nasa in 1972 and set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences which planned to bolster "individual and aggregate change through cognizance research".