By Fabien Hisbacq
Published on
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She sits in the middle of one of the halls of the Toulouse Space City for over twenty years. The moon stone always arouses so many emotions in visitors. She was brought back to earth there are just half a century ago. Here is his story.
We are in 1971. Man set foot on lunar soil for the first time two years earlier and missions follow one another on the Earth satellite for the American space agency, NASA. July 26, 1971, at 9:34 a.m. local time, a Saturn V rocket from the mission Apollo XV takes off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
It is already the seventh time thata crew thus flies to the moon and the fourth manned expedition which must set foot on its surface. On the other hand, it is the first to benefit from a Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV), a car that allows you to go further than during previous visits to the lunar star.
During their second scuba diving 385,000 km from Earth, 1is August 1971, commander David Scott and the pilot of the Eagle Lunar Module James Irwin heading towards the edge from the Dune crater 3 km from their ship. They take samples there from a rock.
One of them has the number 15499. It measures approximately 17 x 8 cm and weighs 2.024 kg. In all, the two moon walkers report 76.7 kg of samples.
Apollo 15 ends August 7, 1971 with the return to the blue planet of astronauts Scott, Irwin and Alfred Woden.
The lunar samples brought back by the Apollo missions are very quickly used to conduct scientific studies. And cut into sub-samples. The one numbered 15449 is no exception to the rule. After returning from the Apollo 15 mission, he was transferred to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Space Center in Houston and divided into 136 larger or smaller pieces.
But not all of these rock fragments end up in the hands of scientists. NASA has also chosen to lend to institutions in order to display them to the public.
A 163.44 g piece that is over 3 billion years old
This is the case of the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, who received in 1998 a moonstone referenced 15499.10. For the occasion, the astronaut John Young (who went to the Moon during the Apollo XVI mission) had moved to the Pink City. The stone had previously been exposed to the immense Air and Space Museum in Washington.
It weighs 163.44 g and is approximately 3.4 billion years old. This stone never directly knew the earth’s atmosphere. She bathes in nitrogen, under glass, to avoid any oxidation.
Unique in France
Toulouse is the only city in France to exhibit a moon stone in this way (which still belongs to NASA, since it is a loan). Others are occasionally, as it was in 1969 at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris just after the first mission to the Moon, or in Vienna (Austria), a few years ago. And some stay longer in the windows. The success of the Parisian stone thus led to the extension of his stay at Palace of discovery.
A fake stone in a museum in the Netherlands!
But beware of counterfeits. An unusual misadventure thus happened to a Dutch museum in 2019. Le Rijksmuseum d’Amsterdam discovered that his stone exhibited since 1991 was … a piece of petrified wood.
Yet the stone had been offered in 1969 to a Prime Minister of the Netherlands by the American Ambassador. And the museum, proud of its acquisition, had insured it for 50,000 euros! It was the doubts of an expert that put an end to the deception.
In Joe Biden’s office
In addition to museums, institutions also keep samples out of sight for scientific purposes. And heads of state occasionally check it out in their offices. As is the case with US President Joe Biden. A moon stone brought back by Apollo XVII) is thus present in the oval office of the White House. But France also has other stones, since former President Richard Nixon had distributed some to world leaders in 1973, after having already donated fragments of moon dust to 134 countries in 1969.
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