By
Kathy Montgomery

Stepping off the surface of the moon for the last time in 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan said, “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind.” More than 50 years later, NASA is planning that long-awaited return.

In 2026, the Artemis program is expected to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole. And, like every astronaut to have made the journey before them, those voyagers will have trained for their mission in Northern Arizona. In recent years, scores of NASA personnel have come to the state to test equipment, communications and protocols — efforts that culminated in May with the most high-fidelity exercises so far. 

Wearing spacesuit simulators, astronauts Kate Rubins and Andre Douglas completed a series of simulated moonwalks on Babbitt Ranches land near Flagstaff, collecting geological samples while communicating with Mission Control in Houston. 

“This is the only kind of place where we can pull together all the aspects of a lunar mission [with] the scale we have on the moon itself and relevant geology,” says Dave Coan, a NASA engineer. But the state’s legacy with space travel extends far beyond geography. This kind of training was pioneered in Arizona — and it influenced the very direction of the space program. 

In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy proposed landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth, NASA took that direction without embellishment: Early astronauts were military test pilots who had no interest in science. But Eugene Shoemaker, a young geologist with dreams of traveling to the moon, couldn’t imagine wasting an opportunity to engage in scientific discovery. He helped pioneer a new scientific discipline — astrogeology — and worked to promote it at both the U.S. Geological Survey and the space program.

Shoemaker’s USGS colleagues considered it a crackpot idea. But Shoemaker was persuasive, and the new unit opened in 1960 in California with a small grant from NASA. Within a few years, it became a full-fledged USGS branch and moved to Flagstaff. Northern Arizona had everything the fledgling branch needed: abundant and diverse cinder cones, lava flows and craters; two astronomy facilities, Lowell Observatory and a U.S. Naval Observatory station; and Arizona State College, which later became Northern Arizona University. 

The first nine astronauts arrived in Flagstaff for training in January 1963. A reporter for the Arizona Daily Sun observed that when they stepped off their planes, “they got a pretty good idea of what the weather might be like [on the moon] — minus-5 degrees.” The two-day itinerary included instruction at Meteor and Sunset craters, telescope time at local observatories “and little sleep.”

Into the early 1970s, branch personnel trained astronauts in geology, mapped out traverses and simulated missions, even replicating parts of the moon’s surface at sites near Flagstaff and Cottonwood. Initially, they operated out of several buildings around Flagstaff. NASA geologist Don Beattie recalled that the offices “were not imposing,” with surplus furniture and bookcases fashioned from packing boxes. An early branch geologist recalled that the only extra chair in his small shared office was a plank laid across his wastebasket. 

“In spite of appearances,” Beattie said, “you could feel the energy and dedication of the staff.” And as fellow geologist Jack McCauley recalled years later, “These were very heady times, with projects coming as fast as we could staff them.”

Operations were fast and loose. Workdays could stretch to 2 a.m. Materials fresh from the photo lab were hung from vehicle windows to dry on the way to the airport. Not uncommonly, planes got flagged down on taxiways. And one geologist recalled sketching his idea for the design of a tool carrier on a bar napkin. “The original Lunar Tool Carrier should have been named the Monte V — for the Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff,” he said.

Before the new branch dedicated its headquarters in 1965, it had already outgrown the space, with more than twice the number of scientists and technicians originally planned. USGS geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt later accompanied Cernan on the last Apollo mission, fulfilling Shoemaker’s vision. And while Shoemaker himself never made it to the moon, some of his ashes did — on a lunar orbiter in the late 1990s. 

In recent years, several sites near Flagstaff, including the Cinder Lake crater fields, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places for their part in the lunar missions. The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies are working to restore one crater field for Artemis training. Another is a popular off-road-vehicle area. 

The original astrogeology branch headquarters was condemned in 2001 and replaced by the larger, more modern Shoemaker Building the following year. Today, its lobby displays photos of those early days and is the final resting place for “Grover,” the simulated lunar rover famously built in a pinch “from odds and ends” when Boeing couldn’t deliver its own in time for scheduled Apollo 15 training.

“I love when you walk in here and you see all the old black and white pictures from the Apollo missions,” Rubins says. “We still get that same thrill thinking about the amazing feat we pulled off 50 years ago and the fact that we’re possibly going to be a part of that in the future. … For us to be this tiny little part of it is amazing.”