The first astrogeologists

Geologist Gene Shoemaker dreamed of going to the Moon well before the space race popularized the idea in the early 1960s. He coined the term astrogeology while studying the Moon from afar, in preparation for someday visiting. By the time his dream started feeling like reality, a surprise medical diagnosis disqualified him from astronaut service in 1963. Shoemaker would still go on to become one of the most influential scientists in the space program, and to create the USGS Branch of Astrogeology. Here, Shoemaker demonstrates an early space suit prototype in April 1964 at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He poses, of course, as if he were sampling rocks.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF USGS

Sending a man to walk on the Moon was an amazing feat of engineering. But there was another group of researchers behind the Apollo missions — and they weren’t at NASA. Geologists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) used lunar photographs and telescopes to make the first detailed maps of the lunar surface. They tested equipment and space suits in the rocky terrain of the Colorado Plateau, and they practiced collecting rocks and measurements while fully suited. Without geologists, the Apollo missions might have been little more than rocket ship stunts. And thanks to them, we can now be sure the Moon’s not made of stinky cheese.

NASA wasn’t always on board with astronauts taking the time to complete science experiments during the Apollo missions. “Fairly early in this business was when NASA told Gene [Shoemaker] that all [the astronauts] could do was plant the flag [during the first Moon landing],” USGS scientist Joe O’Connor said in a 2001 interview. “It was our job to convince NASA otherwise.”

Around this same time, the USGS team figured out a way to communicate, in real time, with the astronauts on the Moon. But when they pitched their idea for a Command Data Reception and Analysis facility to NASA, their aeronautical colleagues didn’t take kindly to the idea that a bunch of geologists would be “commanding” anything. In the end, the scientists were able to explain that their goal was to be available to assist the astronauts during their lunar expeditions, and NASA agreed. The Flagstaff communications room was renamed the Apollo Data Facility.

During the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Shoemaker and others from Flagstaff were in the Science Support Room at Mission Control in Houston. In the weeks after the first moonwalk, their studies of rock samples collected by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin resulted in what would be the first of many breakthroughs in astrogeology — the geology of planetary bodies beyond Earth.

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