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Comet co-discoverer Eugene Shoemaker dies in crash
July 18, 1997
Web posted at: 8:44 p.m. EDT (0044 GMT)ALICE SPRINGS, Australia (CNN) -- Geologist Eugene Shoemaker, who helped discover the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet that crashed into the planet Jupiter three years ago, was killed Friday in an auto accident, Sky and Telescope Magazine announced. He was 69.
His wife, Carolyn, an astronomer who shared in the Jupiter comet's discovery, was injured in the two-car wreck near Alice Springs, the magazine said. Carolyn Shoemaker, who works at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, was expected to recover.
The couple had been in Australia for about two weeks on an annual trip to search for asteroid impact craters in the outback, said astronomer Edward Bowell, also with the Lowell Observatory.
The Shoemakers and colleague David Levy discovered the comet named for them in March 1993 at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a "fragmented" comet consisting of about 20 pieces that crashed into Jupiter, one after another, over the span of about a week in July 1994.
The contacts with Jupiter provided scientists with their first opportunity to watch a comet collide with a planet.
As the collisions occurred, the then newly repaired Hubble Space Telescope took a series of spectacular images of the impacts, showing a bruised and battered Jupiter.
Eugene Shoemaker was considered an expert in impact craters and Earth-crossing asteroids. He, his wife and other co-discovers found and named dozens of comets. The couple also discovered more than 800 asteroids.
"I think Gene Shoemaker is arguably one of the great founders of planetary science," Bowell said. "He more or less single-handedly created the field of impacts ... and he was the one who started bringing to other scientists' and the public's attention the danger of the impacts of comets and asteroids on the Earth."
Shoemaker also was involved in several U.S. space missions, including the Apollo missions to the moon. He taught the astronauts about craters before they left Earth. Shoemaker yearned to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem, Bowell said.
"I think that was the greatest disappointment of his life."
In a February 1996 interview, Shoemaker said he hoped for more manned space missions soon to nearby asteroids, if not to the planet Mars.
"I don't think I will live long enough to see us get to Mars," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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