History
The 1,280 by 320 ft (390 by 100 m) crater was created on July 6, 1962 by a 104-kiloton-of-TNT (440 TJ) nuclear explosion. The device was buried 635 feet (194 m) below the desert floor in Area 10 of Yucca Flat and was the largest cratering shot in the Plowshare Program. The explosion created fallout that affected more US residents than any other nuclear test, exposing more than 13 million people to radiation and marked the end of the program.
- Use in the Apollo Program
Because the craters at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) have features similar to the topography of Moon craters all of the 12 American Astronauts who have walked on the moon trained at the Nevada Test Site before their missions.
- Environmental Recovery
Russian thistle, also known as tumbleweed, is the primary plant species along with some grasses. Analysis in 1993 observed that the original perennial shrubs once living there had shown no recovery. Satellite imagery such as that available in Google Earth, however, shows considerable growth on the ejecta blanket outside the crater rim.
Read more about this topic: Sedan Crater
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)