FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – On National Moon Day, you’ll find off-road enthusiasts doing their thing out on Cinder Lake crater field, but just before the lunar landing in 1969, it was filled with astronauts training to make history.
Before Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins could take the first historic steps on the moon, they had to practice at the Cinder Lake crater fields right outside of Flagstaff.
Looking around, 8-year-old Austin Hannigan said, “Well, it needs the craters to be the moon.”
Eleven-year-old Gavin Campbell of Phoenix said the craters were there.
“Somebody did something on it ‘cause there’s a bunch of holes on the ground,” Gavin said.
He was absolutely right.
Looking to model the moon’s surface, geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Branch working with NASA blasted hundreds of craters here, giving astronauts a place to test out what they would be in for outside our planet.
“I just found that out, that’s crazy,” Shane Campbell said.
Forty-nine years later, off-highway vehicle enthusiasts took advantage of the moon-like landscape.
“I think it’s really cool that we have the opportunity to take advantage of this in our backyard,” Tony Hannigan said.
Grover, a lunar roving vehicle (LRV) built in Flagstaff, also had a run at the off-roading adventures here. And though he never made it to space, he helped prepare 12 astronauts to collect moon rocks.
Carlos Lamadrid, who enjoyed riding his quad in the area, said he could see how the terrain helped astronauts with training.
“The cinder is like volcanic rock and out there in the Cinder Lake it’s very deep, so I see how they could use that,” Lamadrid said.
All the talk of lunar practice out here served as good motivation for Gavin Campbell to achieve his goals.
“I do want to be an astronaut,” he said.
Friday marked the beginning of the events in Flagstaff and the surrounding area leading up to the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, with the Lunar Launch at the downtown Orpheum Theater.