The U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology—A Chronology of Activities from Conception through the End of Project Apollo (1960-1973)

The history of the geologic mapping of the Moon, and the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology’s pure research and outstanding support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) unmanned lunar spacecraft missions, during the Apollo Era have been well-documented by Don Wilhelms in his two outstanding publications The Geologic History of the Moon (Wilhelms, 1987) and To a Rocky Moon (Wilhelms, 1993). Don, having spent his career with the Branch of Astrogeology in Menlo Park, California, directing the Survey’s lunar-geologic mapping activities, is the first to admit that these publications provide insufficient detail on the concurrent activities of the "Manned Lunar Exploration" group of the Branch of Astrogeology, which, based out of Flagstaff, Arizona (starting in mid-1963), became the Branch of Surface Planetary Exploration in 1967 (until the Branches recombined in May 1974). Therefore, the main objective of the present work is to fill that significant gap in the important documentation of Apollo history with regard to the participation of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Our story begins with a brief summary (taken from Wilhelms, 1993) of the pioneering astrogeologic research activities that took place at Coon Butte/Coon Mountain, or Barringer Meteorite Crater (Meteor Crater) just east of Flagstaff from the late Nineteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century. This is followed by a summary of the early considerations by prominent scientists of the Twentieth Century regarding the probable origin of lunar craters (impact versus volcanic) and speculations on the geology of the Moon.

The story then jumps to the spring of 1948 when Eugene Merle Shoemaker, a bright, inquisitive, geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Colorado Plateau uranium project became fascinated one evening with a beautiful, nearly-full Moon while working in southeastern Colorado on 28 April 1948--his twentieth Birthday. That first evening of Gene’s focus on the Moon, and its then uncertain geologic nature, led that spring to Gene’s admitted "epiphany" about going the Moon himself, and exploring its geology as a field geologist. "He said I took the first fork that went to the Moon that Morning" (Levy, 2000, p. 27).