For his Ph.D. at Princeton, Dr. Shoemaker conclusively showed that Barringer Meteor Crater arose from meteor impact.
Dr. Shoemaker founded the Astrogeology Research Program[?] of the USGS in 1961 and was its first director. He was prominently involved in the Lunar Ranger[?] missions to the Moon, which showed that the Moon was covered with a wide size range of impact craters. Dr. Shoemaker was also involved in the training of the American astronauts.
Coming to Caltech in 1969, he started a systematic search for Earth-crossing asteroids, which resulted in the discovery of several families of such asteroids, including the Apollo asteroids[?].
Dr. Shoemaker received a National Medal of Science in 1992. In 1993, he co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which was the first observed planetary impact of a comet.
Dr. Shoemaker perished in a car crash in Alice Springs, Australia in 1997. His ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector[?] space probe.
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