Rieskrater Museum or Ries Crater Museum

The Rieskrater Museum, sometimes known in English as the Ries Crater Museum, focuses on meteors and their collisions with Earth. The museum is housed in a 16th-century barn in Nordlingen, Germany which was part of the medieval city's center.

The area (Nördlinger Ries) is the location of a meteor's impact with Earth c. 15 million years ago and it might have been a double impact (Steinheim crater is nearby). It has been recognized as such since the early 1960s.The museum's collection includes a genuine moon rock from Apollo 16 on loan from NASA in return for using the Nordlingen crater for training for the Apollo 14 astronauts due to its similarities to a moon crater.

The museum is affiliated with the nearby Geopark Ries (UNESCO - International Network of Geoparks), whose mission is to protect the crater.

Visit the Rieskrater Museum to learn about the meteorite that smashed into this spot nearly 15 million years ago. It was almost mile across, traveled at 100,000 miles per hour, and destroyed all life within 100 miles.

The meteor's imprint left the Ries Crater, the circular valley in which Nördlingen now sits, a landscape whose soil is exceedingly rich and yet eerie and rugged enough that Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 astronauts trained here for their trips to the moon.

It also caused a local graphite deposit to instantly fuse and harden into an estimated 79,000 tons of micro-diamonds, which to this day are scattered by the millions throughout the rocks and stone that make up most of Nördlingen's buildings.

The shape of the Reis Crater is echoed in the circular shape of the town and the surrounding fields.
The museum is open Tues–Sun 10am–4:30pm (closed noon–1:30 Nov-Apr).
Hintere Gerbergasse/Eugene-Shoemaker-Platz 1;
tel. +49-(0)9081/273-8220;
www.rieskrater-museum.de