Melissa Sevigny

This week we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, and its unique connection to Northern Arizona…. If you were born before 1969, chances are you remember exactly where you were when announcement came that “the Eagle has landed.” Flagstaff resident Karen Malis Clark does. She was thirteen years old at the time and her father was literally a rocket scientist. He built an escape rocket for the Apollo astronauts to use if something went wrong during launch. In the last segment of our series this week, Karen Malis-Clark shares a bittersweet memory about her father and that time in history.

This week we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, and its unique connection to Northern Arizona. Every astronaut who walked on the moon first came to Flagstaff to train. That’s partly because it was home to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Branch of Astrogeology, founded by geologist Gene Shoemaker. Shoemaker’s secretary, Jody Swann, remembers what it was like to work there during the heyday of Apollo…and mapmaker Ray Jordan recalls the Surveyor missions, unmanned spacecraft that went to the moon just before Apollo. They’re today’s voices in our weeklong series.

This week we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing and its unique connection to Northern Arizona. Everyone who walked on the moon first trained in Flagstaff. That’s partly because the U.S. Geological Survey’s Branch of Astrogeology was here. Carolyn Shoemaker’s late husband Gene founded the branch. She remembers that exciting time in history. Gerald Schaber was a geologist with the branch and trained crews of astronauts of Northern Arizona’s dramatic landscapes of volcanoes and craters. They’re today’s voices in our weeklong series.

This week we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Everyone who walked on the moon first trained in Flagstaff. We’re hearing stories from the people who worked to make it happen. NASA estimates it took more than four hundred thousand people to get Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon. Baerbel and Ivo Lucchitta were two of them. A husband-and-wife team in Flagstaff, Ivo taught geology to astronauts at places like Sunset Crater and Meteor Crater, while Baerbel made detailed maps of the moon. As young scientists they’d studied the geology of Earth, but were swept up into the Space Age after hearing the unmistakable sound of Sputnik, the first satellite in space.

This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. In many ways that “one giant leap” onto the Moon started off in one small town in Arizona. Every astronaut who walked on the moon first came to Flagstaff to train, in its lunar-like landscape of volcanoes and craters. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports on Flagstaff’s yearlong celebration of its role in the historic moon landing.