AD Stories: Rusty Schweickart and the Barringer Crater

Wow. What a day it’s been. Asteroid Day 2017 has gone by and from what we can gauge so far based on overall views, social media impressions and newspaper articles, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a huge success! We are currently still working on statistics which we will share with you as soon as they are ready. But it’s great to see that weeks of intense preparations paid off. Our team and the guys at BCE and SES pulled together and delivered a smooth, exciting and educational broadcast experience to the world. But none of this would have been possible without the work our international coordinators put into their regional events either. As I write this, we have already started with preparations for next year’s edition, and are getting ready to slowly release the different broadcast segments and panels as compact videos.

But more on this later. Right now, we have something else to share with you. We asked our speakers, hosts and experts here in Luxembourg about personally meaningful asteroid stories they wanted to share with the world. Some of them had fascinating tales to contribute, we’ve collected the best of them. When reading through these stories, one thing seems clear to me: To each one of them, asteroids are more than just rocks floating through space, but items imbibed with deeply personal meaning and stories that connect them to the astronomical field.

We’ll do a week-long series, releasing one story each day. We’re starting with Apollo 9 Astronaut and Asteroid Day co-founder Rusty Schweickart.

AD Stories: Rusty Schweickart

The tiny piece of an iron-nickel asteroid that Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart brought along reminds him of an astronomer friend.

This shiny bit of metal is a very special souvenir which I’ve cherished ever since

“I’ve had this metallic lapel pin since the day Gene Shoemaker and I found it on the margins of Barringer Crater in Winslow, Arizona during a geology field trip for our third group of astronauts.  Gene was running our astronaut group through the crater formation dynamics that occur when an asteroid plows into the Earth’s surface at hypersonic speed.  The crater rim is formed during the blasting out of millions of tons of earth which are thrown out and overturned in the process.  This particular asteroid, a fairly rare iron-nickel one, was also totally disrupted and fragmented. However given its metallic composition thousands of bits and pieces survived the blast and were  scattered throughout the debris field around the crater. While walking the perimeter and looking at the rim debris Gene noted this shiny bit of metal and handed it to me as a very special souvenir which I’ve cherished ever since.

 I never wear this pin without thinking about Gene

“Gene was a very special guy. He was the first to recognise and prove the impact nature of the Barringer Crater (now called Meteor Crater) and became dedicated to the discovery of near-Earth asteroids. While he desperately wanted to become an astronaut himself he was never able to realise his dream due to a health issue. Nevertheless he became a very close friend and wonderful teacher to all of us who studied geology under him. I never wear this pin without thinking about Gene and Carolyn, his wife and fellow astronomer.”

—

Read Mark Boslough’s story here.

Read Sabinije von Gaffke’s story here.

Read Patrick Michel’s story here.

Read Alan Fitzsimmons’s story here.

Read Mario Jurić’s story here.