Throughout the 1960's the proposed American Moon landings would have remained little more than publicity stunts to compete with the Soviet Union's 'Sputnik 1', the first artificial satellite, unless two scientists, Harold Urey and Eugene Shoemaker, had ensured that science would be part of the lunar agenda.

Shoemaker had very strong beliefs about the origin of the craters on the Moon and did not believe they were of volcanic origin. He believed that the majority were formed by the impact of meteorites on its surface. This was a hotly debated idea at the time, but Shoemaker's belief that collisions were a commonplace part of the Solar System's activity was spectacularly demonstrated in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere, the first observed occurrence of its kind. This event confirmed a belief which was becoming the backbone of the emerging 'Giant Impact' theory.

Shoemaker is the only person to be buried on the Moon, his ashes carried there by the spacecraft 'Lunar Prospector' which crash landed in 1999.