Can’t you go to the moon with NASA? Mistastein Crater in Canada is the next best thing.

Like most of my dating life, the crater’s remote location is isolated from most humans and mimics solitude on the moon; The structure is similar to what you would find in many lunar craters; And the area contains rare rocks much like those astronauts find on the moon.

These qualities made it a suitable training ground for prospective astronauts for NASA’s Artemis mission, which plans to land astronauts on the moon as early as 2025. On Wednesday, NASA took the important step of returning to the moon and Launched Test flight of an unmanned aircraft called Artemis I, which will not land on the surface but will remain in lunar orbit for up to 25 days to demonstrate that rockets and spacecraft can fly safely.

“This crater in Labrador was not known to be one during the Apollo missions,” said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in Canada who guided astronauts around the crater. “I want to see every astronaut who has walked on the moon finally come to Mistastin.”

Mistastin, known locally as Kamestastin, is located in the First Nation Mushuau Innu spiritual and traditional hunting ground and requires their approval to visit.

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The crater is basically “in the middle of nowhere,” says planetary geologist Cassandra Marion, who has visited the site six times. There is no official runway, and visitors usually land in small, depressurized cargo planes in areas of dense gravel, if there are no boulders in the way. It often rains and the wind blows. When there is no wind, black flies gnaw a lot.

Located in the Canadian Arctic, the rugged terrain is a mix of taiga and tundra. Black spruce and alder live in the lowlands, while lichens are seen near riverbeds and at higher elevations. Then there are the delicious blueberries all over the tundra. If you don’t pay attention to where you sit, Marion says, you could wake up with a “purple butt.”

“She’s a tough lady, in a way,” Marion said, “but I’ll be back.” “It’s one of the most beautiful places you’ve ever been. You feel like you’re the only one there for miles at a time.

In September, Marion and Usinsky took two astronauts to Mistastein crater to practice geology and study rocks they might see on the moon. Most of the rock is accessible via outcrops or rock faces that appeared millions of years ago.

Mistastein crater was formed when an asteroid broke up about 36 million years ago and left the 28 kilometer wide hole in the Earth seen today. Large craters like these are called “complex craters” and are common on the moon, Osinsky said.

Complex craters are shallow, flat depressions, not bowl-shaped like in Arizona meteorite crater Where astronauts also train. Like many complex lunar craters, Mitastin also has a mountain at its center called Central Peak.

“This crater in Labrador is not only a complex impact crater, it’s also relatively well preserved,” Osinski said. “Been there a few times and it’s still very clean when you walk up to the ledge and then really look into this big hole in the ground.”

PHOTO: NASA’s Artemis I rocket is finally launched

We know that being in Mistastein Crater is not appropriate like the moon. Unlike the Moon, we have wind, water and Wi-Fi. Indeed, modern Mistastin may not look like the Moon because it contains a lake (covering about half the size of the main crater), probably the result of the drying up of glaciers from the last ice age. But don’t let the lake fool you.

The great similarity with our lunar friend lies in its rocks. It is one of only two craters on Earth that contain large amounts of rock called anorthosite. The other is the heavily eroded Manicouagan impact facility in Quebec, making the younger and better preserved Mistastin crater the preferred choice for research and astronaut training.

While anorthosite is rare on Earth, it is common on the Moon. You may never say its name, but you see it every time you look at the moon: The rock is a light-colored, highly reflective patch visible across the lunar surface that’s called the lunar plateau.

“One of the reasons we see so much on the moon is the way it formed,” said Julie Stobar, a lunar geologist at the Universities Space Research Consortium’s Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Compared to our planet, the Moon’s surface is mostly gouged by impact craters and volcanoes.

According to popular formation theory, the Moon appeared when a Mars-sized object collided with the young Earth early in the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Hot debris from around Earth melted into the moon, Stopar said, blanketing the young moon in a sea of ​​magma — “basically just lava, lava everywhere.”

In a simplified explanation, Stobar said that as the surface of the magma ocean cooled over time, various minerals and rocks began to crystallize. The denser material sinks and the lighter material floats, essentially becoming the lunar surface. The dominant mineral floating on the surface is anorthite which is the dominant element in anorthosite rocks.

The story of anorthosite’s origin on Earth is more complex and not as well understood, said Marion, who works as a scientific adviser at the Canadian Air and Space Museum. Research shows Anorthosite also probably formed due to the release of lighter crystals in the magma, but deeper in the mantle. As the magma slowly cools and crystallizes, the less dense mineral crystals separate from the denser material and solidify to form anorthosite. Rocks are brought to the surface by erosion and plate tectonic activity.

So the fact that an asteroid just hit a crater in this rare anorthosite-rich region? Well, that’s natural luck.

The collusion causes higher temperatures and pressures, which essentially crack, fragment and melt the rock. Marion said the effect of the high-velocity impact was similar to a large impact on the moon.

“The way the rocks changed is similar to how they changed on the moon after the impact,” Marion said.

Anorthosite is found in this area of ​​Labrador, Marion says, although you can’t enter the crater itself.

Astronauts traveling to the moon will photograph various types of rock, such as molten rock, and provide observations to help researchers like Osinski back on Earth.

“They can’t return every stone they see. We want them to have a mentality like, ‘Okay, I have 100 stones in front of me and I can bring back two.’” [and] “Like real-time voting, basically,” Osinski said.

If astronauts can bring back more moon rock, Stobar said, researchers can date craters on the moon and create a better geological history of our neighbors and the floating debris in our early solar system. He said we can also learn how much water was delivered to the Earth and the Moon by comets and asteroids and any challenges to life back then.

“I’m very excited to see this type of exploration happening,” said Stobar, who is a member of NASA’s Orbiter Exploration Mission team. “Scientifically, I knew it would be good because every time we get a sample from the moon, we learn a lot about it. Even today, we still learn a lot about the moon from samples taken back 50 or 60 years now.”