Moonwalker to Get Key to City

Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, will be honored by Petaluma and receive the keys to the city in ceremony this Saturday.  

Mitchell served as a Navy pilot during the Korean War, for which he received a Distinguished Service Medal. He later studied aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was part of the historic Apollo 14 mission and the sixth person in the world to walk on the moon.

Tickets to the ceremony, held at the Petaluma-Hamilton Masonic Lodge Saturday at 2:30pm are sold out, but fans can meet or at least catch a glimpse of Mitchell at 12:30pm Saturday as he visits the Petaluma Historical Museum and then travels via motorcade to the Masonic Lodge.

The museum recently opened an exhibit titled “Korea: The Forgotten War.”

“The Korean War was the inception of the jet fighter and many of the veterans went on to work for NASA,” said Liz Cohee, a Director of Good Works at the museum. “The chances he took and the work he did there was all about the scientific outreach into the future.”

In 1973, Mitchell founded IONS in west Petaluma, an organization that fuses science and spirituality through lectures, workshops and other events. He is also the author of many essays and books including "The Way of the Explorer."