Preparing future explorers for a return to the moon

To train future explorers to support NASA's mission to return to the Moon's surface. Last week, a group of domestic and international students traveled to Barringer Meteorite Crater, Arizona (aka Meteor Crater) to learn necessary skills that could help NASA implement its plans for human and robotic missions to the lunar surface.

r. David Kring, a Universities Space Research Association scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), created the training program to instruct postdoctoral researchers and graduate students studying the impact of the Earth, the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere. Dr. Kring has been engaged in studies of Meteor Crater for decades and has trained post-Apollo astronauts there.

The Field Training and Research Program at Meteor Crater is a week-long geology field class that introduces students to impact cratering processes and provides an opportunity to assist with a research project at the crater. The crater represents the type of ground lunar explorers will encounter on the Moon's surface and was, for that reason, an important training site for Apollo astronauts.

In the training program just completed, sixteen students mapped the distribution of rocky debris from the impact of an impacting asteroid. This kind of debris, when found around the world, is the type of material an astronaut would collect for Earth for scientific analysis.

The students represented several US universities (Auburn University, Case-Western Reserve University, Northern Arizona University, Rutgers University, University of Houston, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Texas at San Antonio, and Washington University in St. Louis) and universities in Belgium, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The program, supported by NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), is an important training component of the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration (CLSE), a joint venture between the LPI and NASA's Johnson Space Center. This is the fifth edition of the training program and nearly 100 students have participated since 2010.

"SSERVI is very proud to have the support of the LPI Meteor Crater Field Camp," said SSERVI Director Greg Schmidt, "a key bastion of geological field research on impact cratering processes and of particular importance to our plans for a return to the Moon. "We are particularly proud of the 'impact' of this fascinating science and exploration of this unique location."

This student activity is made possible with the generous assistance of the Barringer Crater Company and Crater Enterprises.

Explore further:
Bright streaks on the moon are a product of space weathering