Meteor Crater, Arizona

Astronaut practicing near Meteor Crater

Buzz Aldrin looked at the rim of the massive crater hovering five stories above him. It was treacherous terrain, but Aldrin, being a part of the exclusive group of Apollo astronauts, was not nervous. It was his job to explore where no one had explored before.

The heavy suit hindered his movements, but Aldrin knew he had a job to do, and no difficulty would stand in his way.

Suddenly, his right boot caught a rock sideways, sending him to the ground with a painful crunch. Worse, though, was that a gaping tear had ripped through the suit's arm, and Aldrin knew what could happen within moments.

On the moon’s surface, he may lose consciousness within 15 seconds as his brain depletes the last of his oxygen supply. Since there would no longer be any artificial pressure within the suit, the water in his body would immediately begin to boil at normal body temperature. Finally, the lack of oxygen would cause his death within one or two minutes.

This was a serious situation, but the iconic adventurer would have another day to ponder that tear in the arm of his suit. This was Meteor Crater in Arizona, and NASA had just learned a valuable lesson.

Suits to function on the moon or other planets must have redundancy after redundancy to ensure a simple fall will not end catastrophically, thus ending any hopes of a successful mission. By the time NASA sent a man to the moon, the suits had 21 layers to ensure the astronaut was as perfectly protected from any unforeseen and possibly tragic situations.

Laureen and John Beyer enjoying Meteor Crater, Arizona

During the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would utilize the first impact crater recognized on Earth for their astronaut training, gearing up for the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, and follow-up missions.

Mining area and astronaut training grounds, Meteor Crater, Arizona

Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who would become the second person to ever step onto the surface of the closest celestial neighbor, may have been grateful for that tumble he had taken within the confines of Meteor Crater, way back on Earth in Arizona.

Meteor Crater, 44 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, is now a mecca for those who are interested in not only space but also what sometimes falls from space.

Early geologists believed the three-quarters-of-a-mile-wide by nearly 600 feet deep crater was the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. 

Meteor Crater, Arizona

One man, Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, saw the crater for himself in 1903 and proposed that the nearly circular crater was caused by a meteor, and not volcanic activity.

Daniel Barringer

The scientific world scoffed, but the stubborn self-made man spent the next 27 years digging in the center of the crater looking for that elusive meteor, along with dozens of skilled workers he hired through the years. He never found the meteor and suffered a massive heart attack on November 30, 1929.

Neither the engineer nor his contemporaries understood that when a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere, nearly 90% of its mass is burned off by the friction of speeding at 26,000 miles per hour, as was the case with the meteor striking the Arizona High Desert. Thus, this meteor was only 

Dig as he might, Barringer was never going to find a large meteor, only tiny shards that were blasted all over the surrounding desert for miles. 

Viewing window looking toward Flagstaff to the northwest

It would take four more decades before planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker told the world that Mr. Barringer had been correct.

Shoemaker studied the crater sides and floor, and compared them to craters left after atomic bomb detonations. He referred to ‘shocked rocks’ and microscopic high-pressure minerals like coesite that had been pulverized by a hyper-velocity impact.

Just like Barriniger had once theorized.

Meteor Crater is only 50,000 years old, relatively young compared to the North Pole Dome Impact Crater, which could date back three billion years. Or the most famous one, the Chicxulub, which plummeted into the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, killing off nearly 75% of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.  

Nevertheless, Daniel Barringer will forever go down in history as the man who first recognized a meteor impact crater on Earth.

And that is a pretty huge legacy.

John R. Beyer getting ready for next mission

John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

For further information: https://meteorcrater.com/