SHORT FEATURE The Man Born on the Earth, Buried on the Moon

Satyaloke Chattopadhyay

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

UGENE Merle Shoemaker is the only person on the included farming, business, teaching, motion pictures, etc. planet whose remains have been buried on the moon. in Los Angeles. When Muriel got a job as a teacher in the EHe was the founder of the field of planetary science. Buffalo School of Practice of the State Teachers College at The journey of his early life is as intriguing as his later days. Buffalo, she took Eugene along with him to Buffalo city. They Eugene Merle Shoemaker (also called Gene) was born would return to Los Angeles during the summers. on 28 April 1928. His mother Muriel May was a teacher and It was during his stay in Buffalo that Eugene developed father George Estel Shoemaker did a variety of jobs which an interest in rocks and minerals.

38 | Science Reporter | July 2021 The family returned to Los Angeles in 1942 where Gene future manned landing on the moon. He was significantly finished his schooling. During his school life, he also got involved in the Lunar Ranger missions to the moon and was a summer job as a lapidary where he carved and decorated the lunar geology principal investigator for Apollo 11, Apollo stones and other precious minerals. 12 and Apollo 13. In 1944, Gene was enrolled at Caltech (California Shoemaker was also involved in training the American Institute of Technology). After graduation in 1948, he took up Astronauts. He was even an able candidate for an Apollo Moon the study of Precambrian Metamorphic Rocks in New Mexico flight and was set to be the first geologist to walk on the Moon which let him earn his MSc degree from Caltech in 1949. but was unfortunately disqualified due to Addison’s disease. Next, he enrolled for a doctoral programme at Princeton Eugene served as a CBS News television commentator during University. Eugene married his roommate Richard Spellman’s the early Apollo Missions, namely, Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 sister Carolyn on 17 August 1951. They settled in Flagstaff in missions and did live coverage of those missions along with the 1960s and had three children: two daughters and one son. Walter Cronkite. Interestingly, Eugene motivated Carolyn to take up Eugene did a systematic study of asteroids that cross astronomy so that she could join Gene’s team who were the Earth’s orbit and also studied the Apollo asteroids. He looking for asteroids that were approaching the Earth. along with his wife also discovered several comets, asteroids Carolyn was taught astronomy by a student who was and meteorites. Most notably Comet Shoemaker-levy 9. This working at the Lowell Observatory. She soon showed great comet hit Jupiter in July 1994 leaving a scar on its face. potential and set off on a career as a planetary astronomer at This impact was televised around the globe. Shoemaker had the age of 51. also been credited by the Minor Planet Centre with the co- Having made a name for himself in planetary sciences discovery of 183 minor planets within just seventeen years. and geology, Eugene was soon taken up by the United States Eugene Shoemaker spent most of his life studying Geological Survey (USGS) in 1950 where he remained till the undiscovered impact craters around the world. On 18 July end of his career. One of his initial assignments was to search 1997, during one such expedition in Tanami Track a few for Uranium deposits in Utah and Colorado. His next mission hundred kilometres northwest of Alice Springs, Australia was to study volcanic processes. Eugene took this opportunity he had a head-on car accident. Eugene Shoemaker died in to study and explore the Hopi Buttes (Monogenetic volcanic that accident and his wife was severely injured. This fatal field) of Northern Arizona, which was close to the Meteor crash happened when comet Hale-Bopp was still visible to Crater. their naked eye as they had moved towards the southern Daniel Barringer, an entrepreneur and mining engineer hemisphere. who had discovered the Meteor Crater in 1891, postulated On 31 July 1999, on the suggestion of Carolyn, some that it had been caused by the impact of a meteor. Around of Eugene’s ashes were taken to the Moon by the Lunar the same time, G.K. Gilbert, the chief geologist of the Prospector Space probe in a capsule. The capsule was designed USGS, examined the crater and announced that it had been by Carolyn. The service was provided by Celestis-Inc. at the created by an explosive venting of the volcanic stream. Since request of NASA on a commercial basis. Shoemaker’s ashes then a majority of scientists accepted Gilbert’s explanation became the first private delivery to the lunar surface. Eugene of the cause of the crater, and it remained the conventional Shoemaker is the only person in the world whose remains knowledge. However, Shoemaker’s investigations half a have been placed on any celestial body outside Earth. century later altered the general understanding at that time. The brass foil which wrapped Shoemaker’s memorial His study on the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor capsule is inscribed with images of the last comet which Crater under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess helped Shoemaker and his wife had observed together — Comet Hale- him earn his PhD degree at Princeton around 1960. Shoemaker Bopp, an image of Barringer Meteor Crater and a quotation had identified that the Meteor Crater had the same form and from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which read: structure as the two craters created from the atom bomb tests “And, when he shall die Take him and cut him out at the Nevada test site. He along with Edward C.T. Chao in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine identified shocked quartz at the Meteor Crater proving that That all the world will be in love with night the crater was formed due to an impact generating extremely And pay no worship to the garish sun” high temperatures and pressures. They followed this discovery Shoemaker was honoured with a crater named “Shoemaker with the identification of coesite within suevite which proved Crater” and an Asteroid named “2074 Shoemaker”. In a 2020 its impact origin. album, a metal band named Nightwish pays tribute to Eugene Dr Eugene Shoemaker directed a team at the USGS in the song “Shoemaker”. The composition was inspired by his centre in Menlo Park California, which generated the first biography which moved the band to tears. The song received geologic map of the Moon using photographs taken by Francis widespread acclaim — a worthy tribute to a revolutionary man G. Pease. Gene also helped pioneer the field of astrogeology in the field of geology and astronomy. by founding the Astrogeology Research Programme. He joined the television imaging team of Harold Urey and Gerard Satyaloke Chattopadhyay, BSc 3rd Semester (Chemistry Hons.), Kuiper. This came in handy as a preparatory mission for the J.K. College, Purulia. Email: [email protected]

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