Explore Cinder Lake Crater Field, Arizona

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Cinder Lake Crater Field lies just south of Sunset Crater, northeast of Flagstaff Arizona. The best access to it is from forest road 776 which is marked as the "Cinder Hills ORV area" on a sign along highway 89 just south of the turnoff into the Sunset Crater National Park. Between July and October of 1967, NASA and the Astrogeology branch of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff created an artificial 500-foot-by-500-foot crater field at Cinder Lake in order to train astronauts as well as test equipment and techniques for lunar exploration. They used a Lunar Orbiter image to re-create an actual lunar landscape by setting off charges of the right size to make craters of the right size, as well as setting them off in the proper sequence to get the overlaying ejecta layed out in the same order as seen in the lunar image. Workers created 47 craters with diameters measuring between 5 feet and 43 feet, approximating Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), Apollo 11’s planned lunar landing site.

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