S.H.I.E.L.D. Crater Investigation Site

The S.H.I.E.L.D. Crater Investigation Site was a temporal S.H.I.E.L.D. facility dedicated to guard and study an alien object in New Mexico.

Thor's Infiltratio
Thor and Jane Foster arrived at the site were Mjølnir landed on Earth, finding that S.H.I.E.L.D. erected a heavily guarded research station around the hammer. Thor asked Foster to stay hidden and promised to return her belongings after recovering Mjølnir.

An electric storm began, caused by Mjølnir's reaction Thor's presence, and it started jamming most of the electronic devices in the facility. Agent Jasper Sitwell, second in command of the operation after Coulson, ordered to alter the course of all commercial flights in the area, to not be affected by the interferences in an area denominated "event zone".

Thor opened a hole in the fence, and knocked out two agents sent to check it. Before their unconscious body was discovered, Thor managed to enter the complex, but in a short amount of time, all agents were mobilized and a red alert code was declared. Worried, Foster called Erik Selvig to come to the crater site in one hour in case he didn't have notice of her before.

Thor managed to enter the corridors constructed aroun Mjølnir, easily knocking down many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents before approaching. Agent Coulson, taking care of the situation, ordered to place an armed observer in an elevated position, and agent Clint Barton, one of the agency's best marksmen who arrived that same night as a reinforcement, fulfilled the request.

Thor had to fight a strong agent, able to hold his hand agains Thor for a while, but was able to defeat the agent. With Thor approaching Mjølnir, Barton was ordered not to act, as Coulson wanted to see what Thor would do with the hammer.

However, the hammer deemed Thor unworthy of lifting it, and Thor, frustrated, had to see how it didn't move a bit while being surrounded by agents and subsequently arrested.

Foster reunited with Selvig and Lewis, and while Selvig showed her a children's book about retrieved from the local library, with legends about Thor, Loki, Mjølnir and the Bifrost Bridge among others. Lewis sided with Foster in her theory that Norse gods could have been an advanced alien race, venerated as gods by the vikings because they were unable to fully understand what they truly were.

Agent Coulson started interrogating Thor, wanting to know where he received the training needed to subdue the multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. agents he defeated while trying to gain access to Mjølnir, as for Coulson, only mercenaries with similar or better training could have defeated them. As there are organizations that would pay large sums of money for a mercenary with Thor's skills, he demanded to know his identity, to no avail.

Loki appeared before Thor, and lied to him assuring that Odin died after Thor's banishment, and now Loki was the one who occupied the throne of Asgard. Thor, saddened to learn the news, asked to return to Asgard, and Loki lied again, saying that the peace with Jotunheim conditioned by the exile, and that Frigga had explicitly forbidden Thor's return.

Loki parted ways with Thor, starting a change of heart about the actions that lead to his own exile. Loki tried to lift Mjølnir himself, but as Thor before him, he was deemed unworthy.

Meanwhile, Coulson and Barton discussed how to find more about Thor's true identity, as Barton was able to see Jane Foster leaving the location, and realized that Thor was not alone and the people that were helping him may not know his true motivations.

Coulson attended Erik Selvig, who came to the facility to try to pick up Thor, having faked an I.D. as Donald Blake, and he excused his acts as being angry for the confiscation of Foster's research, and he was able to deafeat the agent due to the consumption of steroids. Coulson let Selvig depart with Thor to monitorize his moves, and Thor, while leaving, retrieved Foster's confiscated book.