Moonstruck Geologist Played a Vital Role at NASA

Moonstruck Geologist Played a Vital Role at NASA

By Joe Motheral

Dr. Farouk El-Baz lives with his wife Patricia in Leesburg, but he’s also quite familiar with the moon.

As a geologist on the Apollo lunar missions from 1967 to 1972, he and his colleagues determined the safest lunar landing sites. El-Baz was secretary of NASA’s Landing Site Selection Committee consisting of 28 scientists who developed the rationale for choosing the safest site and the scientific objectives for the six lunar landing missions.

He chaired astronaut training in visual observations and photography and served at the mission operation control room at the Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake City, Texas. He and his team were successful in pinpointing each Apollo landing site.

“It was especially satisfying,” he said, “particularly because none of the participants had been there, or experienced anything like it. It was even more so because I became a U.S citizen in 1970.

“We had no idea what it looked like and what should we seek there,” he recalled, adding that NASA planned three unmanned missions to transmit helpful information. For example, the unmanned Ranger mission was to crash on the moon to see how its surface behaved. The other two took multiple images of the surface.

“I concentrated my efforts on the 2,000-plus images sent by Lunar Orbiter,” El-Baz said. “I began to classify the lunar surface features and study their locations for landings.”

He was was trying to find a “flat enough surface to allow the craft to land perfectly upright, which would ease a perfect launch at the end. We wanted it to be free of large blocks that might interfere with a safe landing.”

He played a key role in the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, and later Apollo missions. He came up with the idea of displaying touchable moon rocks at a museum and also became friends with all the astronauts, some of whom studied geology under his guidance.

Dr. Farouk El-Baz landed a critical NASA role in Apollo moon landings and is shown here with Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

A native of Zagazig, Egypt, El-Baz, now 84, attended renowned Ain Shams University in Cairo where he studied geology because “I had been fascinated by natural rock land forms on Boy Scout trips during my school years.”

In 1960, he was offered a scholarship for graduate study in the U.S. and attended the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy in Rolla. He earned masters and doctorate degrees in geology that included one year studying at MIT. Soon after, he joined the Apollo team.

El-Baz has received a number of awards, including the Egyptian Order of Merit, First Class; Apollo’s Achievement Award and has seven honorary degrees. He’s also a fellow of the U.S. Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World which he represents at the United Nations.

NASA once sent a film crew to cover one of his teaching exercises. The sound man was particularly interested in lunar features and later became coproducer of Star Trek, The Next Generation.

“When they needed a name for that shuttle,” El- Baz said, “he suggested mine.”

He’s now working on two books, “one on my improbable life journey, the other on my proof that my ancestors, the ancient Egyptians, selected the form of their monuments after natural landforms in their western desert.”

Clearly, though, he’s mostly a man of the moon.