Like most travelers, the 12 astronauts who have walked on the Moon brought home souvenirs from their journeys.
But instead of T-shirts, shot glasses, or fridge magnets, NASA’s space cadets returned with Moon rocks—2,196 samples, to be exact.
The U.S. agency still holds a majority of those relics. And, for the first time in more than 40 years, scientists have cracked one open.
The sample, unsealed on Nov. 5 in the Johnson Space Center Lunar Curation Laboratory, was collected from the Moon’s surface by Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt.
During their 1972 mission—the last of NASA’s Apollo program—the pair drove a two-foot long tube into Earth’s satellite, gathering rock and soil samples from a landslide deposit near Lara Crater.
Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan preparing to collect samples 73001 and 73002 (via NASA)
The fragment could answer questions about the Moon and other solar bodies.
“We are able to make measurements today that were just not possible during the years of the Apollo program,” according to Sarah Noble, Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) program scientist at NASA.
“The analysis of these samples will maximize the science return from Apollo,” she said in a statement. “As well as enable a new generation of scientists and curators to refine their techniques and help prepare future explorers for lunar missions anticipated in the 2020s and beyond.”
For nearly half a century, samples returned to Earth from the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions were cleverly stored and preserved for the future, when technology would eventually advance enough to study them.
Well, that day has finally arrived.
This is one example of the technological developments that are enabling a new generation to conduct new science on Apollo samples (via NASA)
Two specimens—73002 and 73001, both collected on Apollo 17—will be inspected as part of ANGSA.
“Opening these samples now will enable new scientific discoveries about the Moon and will allow a new generation of scientists to refine their techniques to better study future samples returned by Artemis astronauts,” NASA astromaterials curator Francis McCubbin said.
“Our scientific technologies have vastly improved in the past 50 years and scientists have an opportunity to analyze these samples in ways not previously possible,” he explained.
Sample 73002—opened this week by Charis Krysher, who called the opportunity “an honor and [a] heavy responsibility”—requires several months of processing before parts can be distributed to the ANGSA team for testing.
This sample was the first set of two scheduled to be opened in the coming months (via NASA/James Blair)
Sample 73001, meanwhile, will be unsealed in January, once scientists have fine-tuned plans for capturing gases from the Moon also collected in the container.
Multiple generations of scientists, engineers, and curators—including some who were part of the original Apollo teams—will work together to study the rocks. Schmitt, the lone geologist on Apollo 17, is also involved.
“This provides an essential link between the first-generation lunar explorers from Apollo and future generations who will explore the Moon and beyond, starting with Artemis,” Charles Shearer, science co-lead for ANGSA, said.
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