Moon’s Crater Named After NASA Chief Exploration Scientist Posthumously

 

Moon, crater

Michael Wargo used to work for NASA as a chief exploration officer, after he had passed away, he was honored with the crater named after him. The crater is located on the dark side of the Moon near the Joule T crater and is 8.6 mile in diameter. It was called Wargo Crater. The scientists worked for NASA for 20 years till his death in 2013.

There is a special authority that assigns names to lunar craters and celestial bodies after astronauts or space-related professionals that hugely contributed to the industry. The duty of giving names belongs to the International Astronomical Union and the person who gets such honor has done something outstanding and his or her service has improved and changed industry for better.

Michael Wargo was an outstanding person who believed that science leads to exploration and exploration is the fundament of science.

His 20-year career in space-industry brought lots of initiatives and projects. He was famous as a science representative, because he had this talent of explaining “rocket science” in a clear, concise and simple manner, so both students and technical professionals could extract something interesting.

He worked on an executive level at NASA and had an ability to set clear goals and way to achieve them. He worked with cross-functional teams and helped to facilitate everything needed to ensure that all the teams have everything for profitable work together. The exploration was his passion, he worked with multinational teams, ensured the work of robotic missions and helped to facilitate interplanetary missions.

It was an inspiration to everybody around him and he was a real motivation to all of his colleagues. He was driven by huge passion to science and his efforts has contributed massively to the global knowledge of our universe.

Wargo was a specialist in exploration, and he was the one who pushed the development of LRO and LCROSS that were launched together back in 2009. LRO is still working on its mission near the orbit, gathering extremely precise information and LCROSS which works with surface and lunar composites to get more information on lunar soil and its characteristics. These missions were groundbreaking in terms of data they have provided, like the presence of water all over the Moon, its cycle and volatile water molecules located on the darker side of the Moon. Based on this data, NASA continues to develop more and more projects like orbital missions CubeSat that are directed mostly on water-related questions on the lunar surface. Another prominent project that is based on the data from LRO and LCROSS is Resource Prospector which is a lunar robotic tool that works on gathering lunar resources.

As for Wargo crater, it was quite an influential one. One asteroid that was few hundred miles in diameter crushed onto the Joule T crater area, creating another one over 3 thousand feet deep. Huge flows of magma expanded all over the area of Joule T crater and created the edge of Wargo crater.

Adele Morrissette, the wife of Michael Wargo told that he would be extremely happy and deeply honored to get the crater on our satellite named after him.

Also, Michael Wargo’s voice was the first one to be transferred to the Moon since the latest Apollo mission back in ’72. Two months after he passed away, his voice recording was broadcasted again all over the Moon’s surface, as this person contributed huge part of his life exploring our satellite.