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Apollo Astronaut Training 1970
In August 1970 the crew of the planned Apollo 14 mission (Alan B. Shepard, commander, and Edgar D. Mitchell) and the back crew of Apollo 14 (Eugene A. Cernan and Joe H. Engle) underwent a geological field training in the Ries crater in preparation for the lunar landing in 1971. The training was supervised by the NASA geologists Dr. Friedrich Hörz and Dr. Mike McEwen and by members of the Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography of the University of Tübingen: Prof. Wolf von Engelhardt (Director), Dr. Dieter Stöffler, and Dr. Manutschehr Abadian. The training started by lectures at the University of Tübingen and was completed by a two-day field work at quarries and outcrops of impact breccias in the Ries.
"I would have preferred to come to Old Germany as a tourist. But this visit is for work. And the field training here will surely be interesting. Here we will learn what kind of rocks we'll have to bring back from the moon." With these words Apollo commander Alan B. Shepard gave his thanks for the great and nice reception at the Stuttgart airport.
Later on, after the Apollo 14 mission to the Fra Mauro Formation of the moon was successfully completed, NASA decided to fly the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 with Eugene Cernan as the commander. Therefore, two lunar landing mission took advantage from the field training in the Ries crater.
