Eugene Shoemaker: The Man on the Moon

When you look up at the moon at night, it is easy to conjure the famous images of Neil Armstrong bouncing down the Apollo 11 ladder and taking man’s very first steps on the surface. Even now, decades later, the footprints of those intrepid astronauts remain. What you may not know is that since 1997, the moon gained a permanent resident – Eugene “Gene” Shoemaker.

A Founding Father of Modern Science

Eugene Shoemaker was born April 28, 1928 in Los Angeles, California. Shoemaker’s mother, Muriel, was a teacher and father George worked in farming, business and the motion picture industry. George’s variety of jobs led them to move frequently, but they settled for a time in Buffalo, NY where Eugene was first introduced to the study of rocks at the Buffalo Museum of Education.

By fourth grade, Eugene was collecting samples of minerals and taking night classes in Geology. He fast-tracked his education at every turn, and by nineteen, he had earned a Bachelor’s degree from Caltech. His passion for geology led him to the United States Geological Survey, where he was hired in 1950. Initially, he was to study volcanic processes and search for uranium deposits. As he chased uranium, he ended up in Northern Arizona near a meteor crater. At the time of his arrival near the Barringer crater, the science and mining communities were in a disagreement on whether the crater was the result of a volcanic steam vent or a meteoric impact event. Shoemaker confirmed it was an impact crater caused by a meteor, and used his learnings from the area for the basis of his thesis at Princeton. He earned his Ph.D. in 1960.

Training the Astronauts

By 1961, Shoemaker was chosen to lead the Astrogeology Research Program, where he trained future Apollo astronauts how to collect rock samples in the Barringer Crater. He also began to use photographs to create the first geologic map of the Moon’s surface, which were used in the planning of the first manned mission to the Moon.

Shoemaker didn’t just want to train Astronauts. He was, at one time, in the running to be one. He was set to be the first geologist to walk on the Moon, but a diagnosis of Addison’s Disease grounded him. He continued to help train and conduct research for Apollo missions 11, 12 and 13.

The Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet

In 1969, he began a search for asteroids that could cross Earth’s orbit, and discovered several families of such asteroids. His work found that asteroid strikes were not uncommon, and that one such strike may have been the event that drove non-avian dinosaurs to extinction 66 million years ago.

Along with his wife and fellow scientist Carolyn, he discovered what would come to be known as the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet, which was the scientific community’s first opportunity to observe an impact event on another planet when it ultimately struck Jupiter in 1994.

Permanent Resident on the Moon

Tragically, Eugene Shoemaker and his wife were involved in a car accident in 1997, and he lost his life. A former student, Carolyn Porco, devised a tribute to him that seemed quite fitting. During her time as a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, she learned that Shoemaker was to be cremated. She led an effort to have 1 ounce of his ashes on board NASA’s Lunar Prospector Spacecraft. Wrapped in a brass foil ribbon with a photo of the Barringer Crater and a quote from “Romeo & Juliet”, Shoemaker’s ashes were launched on January 6, 1998 and a year later, when the vessel’s primary mission had ended, it deliberately crashed into the lunar south pole, where it remains to this day.

Although Eugene Shoemaker is currently the only resident of the moon, he may not be the last. For now, you can look up at the moon on a clear, bright night and think of Gene, whose dedication brought us a little closer to touching the stars.

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