50 years ago, the Apollo missions brought take more than 2 thousand samples of rock, and only now is NASA analyzing one of the tubes brought in.
That’s because the Nasa it already had technological advances over the years, and kept several samples sealed to be opened and analyzed only in the future.
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According to a statement by Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, NASA at the time knew that “science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways to address new questions in the future.”
Now, one of those tubes collected over 50 years ago, which was kept sealed in anticipation of scientific breakthroughs, is finally being opened.
The sample named 73001 was collected by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt during the program’s last mission, Apollo 17, in December 1972.
The tube in question is 35 cm long and 4 cm wide, and was hammered into the soil of the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley to collect rocks.
In all, two samples were kept vacuum-sealed while still on the Moon, and this is the first to be opened. In addition to rocky material, the sample may contain gases or volatile materials such as Water and carbon dioxide.
NASA intends to extract such gases, which must be present only in very small amounts, in order to be able to analyze them using spectrometry techniques, which have become increasingly accurate over the last few years.
The sample’s outer protective tube was removed in early February, and revealed no lunar gas, indicating that the sample it protected remained sealed. Starting on February 23, scientists began the long process of drilling the main pipe and collecting the gas contained within it.
Then, the rocky material that is inside the tube will be carefully extracted and broken up so that it can be studied by the most different scientific teams.
Something to note is where this sample in question was collected on the Moon: in a landslide. “We don’t have rain on the Moon. So we don’t really understand how landslides happen on the Moon,” said Juliane Gross, deputy curator of Apollo. Thus, the researchers seek to study this sample to understand what caused the landslide in question.
After tube 73001, there will be three lunar samples still sealed, but senior curator Ryan Zeigler doubts NASA will wait another 50 years to open them.
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“Particularly once they receive samples from the Artemis back, it might be nice to do a real-time direct comparison between whatever is coming back from Artemis, with one of those closed and sealed cores still remaining,” Zeigler explained.
Artemis is NASA’s next lunar mission, and the agency aims to send humans back to the Moon in 2025.
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