Believe it or not, one man is buried on the Moon. His name is Eugene Shoemaker, and he pioneered planetary science.

The first man on the Moon, however, was Neil Armstrong in 1969. He, along with the other astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission explored the lunar surface and collected sample to bring back to Earth. These samples were of particular interest to the man who would eventually end up interred on the Moon.
Eugene Shoemaker is often credited with inventing the field of planetary science. Trained as a geologist, Shoemaker melded his discipline with astronomy, using the great space race to study the surfaces of moons, planets, and comets. He trained the astronauts headed to the Moon, and even sat next to Walter Cronkite on air as NASA’s spokesperson on the status of the moon missions. He named many of the craters, valleys, and mountains on the Moon. His contributions proved so great that he even has a whole comet named after him. In 1994, Comet Shoemaker—Levy 9 gained worldwide attention because it crashed into Jupiter. This impact eventually led to scientists realizing that Jupiter acted as an important “vacuum cleaner” for debris that could otherwise pose a threat to the Earth.
Shoemaker spent much of his later life trekking across the globe to find impact craters that had gone unnoticed. Tragically, one of these trips ended in a fatal car crash. Eventually, Shoemaker’s ashes were sealed in a metal cylinder and sent to the Moon. His wife, Carolyn, who had made many discoveries alongside her husband had an image of the Hale-Bopp comet inscribed on the outside, along with a quote from Romeo and Juliet :


And, when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.


Since his ashes were interred on the Moon, Shoemaker has remained the only person ever buried on an extraterrestrial surface. READ MORE ON www.selectng.com.ng

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