Some were frozen or stored in helium-filled containers shortly after arriving on Earth.
In the next year, Sehlke, along with other scientists and their teams, will receive tiny lunar samples, untouched for close to 50 years, that were collected during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. They hoped that someday other researchers would come along, with the same interest in Earth’s silvery companion, but better instruments. Scientists set them aside in the early 1970s. Soon, a special trove of samples will emerge from the vault. Curators loan them out to scientists around the world in small helpings. cities, according to a NASA spokesperson. Today, the majority of Apollo samples are stowed in a vault at Johnson Space Center, in Houston, behind the same kind of door one might find inside Federal Reserve banks in major U.S. The analysis of these samples produced what remains the leading theory for the formation of the moon: Billions of years ago, a Mars-size world slammed into the young Earth and produced a fountain of debris that coalesced and cooled into the moon. But the presence of anorthosite, right there on the surface, suggest a choppy, molten past-and an event powerful enough to liquefy the landscape. The moon today is undoubtedly barren-“magnificent desolation,” as Buzz Aldrin so wonderfully put it. Scientists discovered that the soil contained fragments of a rock called anorthosite, which tends to float to the top of magma. The samples from the first moon landing, collected by Neil Armstrong, completely transformed our understanding of the moon-and our place alongside it.
From 1969 to 1972, the short but productive years of several moon landings, astronauts delivered more than 800 pounds of lunar souvenirs, including chunks of rock and fine powder. One wrong move, and the powdery specimen might end up scattered across the laboratory floor.Īpollo astronauts brought home much more than that, of course. Their samples come in small vials, in the form of dust, with particles about the size of grains of sand. When most scientists today study lunar samples from the Apollo era, they aren’t working with hefty boulders or even rocks. “If you sneeze,” says Alex Sehlke, a geologist at NASA, “it’s gone.” Don’t destroy them, unless you’ve been given permission sometimes, in the name of science, the samples must be dissolved in acid. Don’t blab to everyone that you have some. There are a few rules for handling pieces of the moon collected by Apollo astronauts.
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