The Daily Telegraph

FORMER NASA astro­naut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell — a vet­eran of the Apollo 14 mis­sion — has stun­ningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have vis­ited Earth on sev­eral occa­sions — but the alien con­tact has been repeat­edly cov­ered up by gov­ern­ments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said dur­ing a radio inter­view that sources at the space agency who had had con­tact with aliens described the beings as ‘lit­tle peo­ple who look strange to us.’

He said sup­pos­edly real-life ET’s were sim­i­lar to the tra­di­tional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

He claimed our tech­nol­ogy is “not nearly as sophis­ti­cated” as theirs and “had they been hos­tile”, he warned “we would have been gone by now”.

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 com­man­der Alan Shep­ard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 min­utes dur­ing their 1971 mission.

“I hap­pen to have been priv­i­leged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been vis­ited on this planet and the UFO phe­nom­ena is real,” Dr Mitchell said.

“It’s been well cov­ered up by all our gov­ern­ments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been priv­i­leged to have been briefed on some of it.

“I’ve been in mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles, who know that beneath the sur­face of what has been pub­lic knowl­edge, yes — we have been vis­ited. Read­ing the papers recently, it’s been hap­pen­ing quite a bit.”

Dr Mitchell, who has a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence degree in aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing and a Doc­tor of Sci­ence degree in Aero­nau­tics and Astro­nau­tics claimed Roswell was real and sim­i­lar alien vis­its con­tinue to be investigated.

He told the aston­ished Ker­rang! radio host Nick Marg­er­ri­son: “This is really start­ing to open up. I think we’re headed for real dis­clo­sure and some seri­ous organ­i­sa­tions are mov­ing in that direction.”

Mr Marg­er­ri­son said: “I thought I’d stum­bled on some sort of astro­naut humour but he was absolutely seri­ous that aliens are def­i­nitely out there and there’s no debat­ing it.”

Offi­cials from NASA, how­ever, were quick to play the com­ments down.

In a state­ment, a spokesman said: “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 a great Amer­i­can, but we do not share his opin­ions on this issue.’