It's like a lunar time capsule: NASA is unsealing lunar samples collected by the Apollo 17 astronauts over 50 years ago.
NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon brought back about 382 kilograms of samples, including rocks, rock cores, rock, pebbles, sand, and dust. Scientists have studied those samples intently over the decades and have learned a lot. But they haven’t studied all of the samples.
“Understanding the geologic history and evolution of the Moon samples at the Apollo landing sites will help us prepare for the types of samples that may be encountered during Artemis,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Artemis aims to bring back cold and sealed samples from near the lunar South Pole.
When the Apollo 17 crew collected the samples, they placed them in a two-chamber sample container called a double-drive tube. The unopened sample is called the ANGSA 73001 sample. The crew sealed it under vacuum on the Moon, and it’s been stored inside a protective outer vacuum tube in an atmosphere-controlled environment at Johnson ever since. NASA unsealed the other portionThey were left to right: Apollo astronauts using sample tube 73001/2 on the Moon. A simple schematic of the sample tube.
“To understand where water in the solar system came from, and particularly how it ended up on Earth, Mars, and in the asteroid belt, we have to consider the moon,” Barnes said in 2019. “Understanding how life on Earth began is intimately tied to the story of how water arrived here. Lunar samples are critical pieces in this puzzle because unlike Earth, where the oldest rocks have largely been erased by plate tectonics, the moon’s ancient rock record is still intact.
Nano-SIMS is a powerful technology, and researchers will undoubtedly bring it to bear on this pristine sample. But we’re not there yet.
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