MIAMI — Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon when he and Alan Shepard helped NASA recover from Apollo 13's “successful failure,” has died in Florida. He was 85.

Mitchell died Thursday night at a West Palm Beach, Fla., hospice after a short illness, his daughter, Kimberly Mitchell, said.

Mitchell's passing coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 1971.

Mitchell, one of only 12 humans to set foot on the moon, was not a typical strait-laced astronaut.

He attempted to communicate telepathically with friends at home during his Apollo mission and in later years said aliens had visited Earth.

He also said he had an “epiphany” in space that focused him on studying consciousness, physics and other mysteries.

“What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness,” Mitchell wrote in his 1996 autobiography.

In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called Mitchell, “one of the pioneers in space exploration on whose shoulders we now stand.”

Mitchell was born Sept. 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas. He joined the Navy and got a doctorate from MIT before joining NASA in 1966.

He helped design and test the lunar modules that reached the moon in 1969.

Shepard, the first American in space in 1961, picked Mitchell to be on Apollo 13's three-person crew. But they were bumped to the next mission so Shepard would have more time to train.

Apollo 13's astronauts were nearly killed when an oxygen tank exploded as they neared the moon in 1970. They made it home safely but never set foot on the moon.

A year later, Shepard, Mitchell and Stuart Roosa were the first crew to try again amid falling support for the moon missions from President Richard Nixon, Congress and the public.

Their mission, Mitchell's only trip in space, was a success.