Soil sample collected by Apollo astronauts 50 years ago from the lunar surface is being cut open NASA scientists before the first landing of Artemis in 2025.
The sample is opened at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston by the Astromaterials Research and Development Division (ARES).
When the Apollo astronauts returned these samples some 50 years ago, NASA prudently kept some of them intact in the hope that future technologies could be used to learn more about the environment.
The team hopes to learn more about the sample and the lunar surface itself, revealing details of the Moon’s geological history and evolution.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Office of Science Mission, said understanding history will help planners understand what types of soil can be expected when the first woman and first person of color land on the surface.
Artemis will return more samples to Earth, bringing cold and sealed chunks of rock and soil from the South Pole.
A soil sample collected by Apollo astronauts 50 years ago from the surface of the Moon is being dissected by NASA scientists ahead of the first Artemis landing in 2025.
When the Apollo astronauts returned these samples about 50 years ago, NASA prudently kept some of them intact in the hope that future technology could be used to learn more about the environment.
Known as specimen ANGSA 73001, it was part of an Apollo 17 drive tube specimen assembled by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt in 1972.
The astronauts hammered a pair of connected 1.5-by-14-inch tubes into the lunar surface to collect rock and soil segments from landslide deposits in the lunar Taurus-Littrow Valley.
They then individually vacuum-sealed one drive tube on the Moon before returning them to Earth.
Thus, only two drive tubes were sealed on the Moon, and this one was opened first, the second was returned in an ordinary unsealed container.
Since then, the sealed tube has been carefully stored in a protective outer vacuum tube and controlled atmosphere at Johnson.
The unsealed segment was opened in 2019 and found many grains and smaller objects known as rocklets that lunar geologists have been eager to study.
The team hopes to learn more about the sample and the lunar surface itself, revealing details of the Moon’s geological history and evolution.
Known as specimen ANGSA 73001, it was part of an Apollo 17 drive tube specimen assembled by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt in 1972.
“Understanding the geological history and evolution of lunar samples at the Apollo landing sites will help us prepare for the types of samples that may be discovered during Artemis,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said.
Artemis aims to deliver cold and sealed samples from the Moon’s South Pole.
“This is an exciting opportunity to learn to understand the tools needed to collect and transport these samples, to analyze them, and to store them on Earth for future generations of scientists.”
NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon in 2025 as part of the Artemis mission.
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.
NASA chose her to represent their return journey to the Moon, which will take astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2025, including the first woman and the next man.
Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly challenging missions that will allow humans to explore the Moon and Mars.
Artemis 1 will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s Deep Space Exploration System: Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Artemis 1 will be an unmanned flight that will lay the foundation for human exploration of deep space and demonstrate our commitment and ability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.
During this flight, the spacecraft will launch the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown.
It will fly 280,000 miles (450,600 km) from the Earth, thousands of miles from the Moon over a roughly three-week mission.
Orion will stay in space longer than any astronaut ship without docking to a space station and will return home faster and hotter than ever before.
With this first exploration mission, NASA will spearhead the next phases of human deep space exploration, where astronauts will build and begin testing systems near the Moon needed for missions to the Moon’s surface and exploration of other places far from Earth, including Mars.
The crew will take a different trajectory and test important Orion systems with humans on board.
Together, Orion, SLS, and ground systems at Kennedy will be able to meet the most demanding crew and cargo needs in deep space.
Ultimately, NASA aims to have a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028 as a result of the Artemis mission.
The space agency hopes this colony will unlock new scientific discoveries, showcase new technological advances, and lay the foundation for private companies that will build the lunar economy.
“The agency knew that science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study material in new ways to tackle new questions in the future,” said Laurie Gleizes, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.
“The ANGSA initiative was designed to study these specially stored and sealed samples.”
The temperature at the bottom of the core was incredibly low when it was harvested, meaning that volatiles may have been present.
These are substances that evaporate at normal temperatures, such as water ice and carbon dioxide.
“For the last 50 years, the lunar core has been encased in a vacuum container for the core sample, which was then enclosed in an external vacuum container,” said Alex Meshik, professor of physics in the arts and sciences and research fellow at McDonnell University. Center for Space Sciences.
“They were stacked together, almost like nesting dolls.”
They are particularly interested in the volatiles in these samples from the Moon’s equatorial regions.
The expected amount of gas in this sealed Apollo sample is likely very small, but if scientists can carefully extract these gases, they could be analyzed and identified using modern mass spectrometry technology.
This technology, which has evolved to a level of extreme sensitivity in recent years, can accurately determine the mass of unknown molecules and use that data to accurately identify them.
This not only improves measurements, but also means that the collected gas can be divided into smaller portions and shared with a large number of researchers involved in various types of lunar exploration.
“Fifty years ago, when these samples were collected, NASA scientists prudently implemented curation procedures that would ensure future generations had access to pristine samples as new analytical methods and procedures became available and new scientific questions were asked.” said Brad Jolliff, co-author of the study at the University of Washington.
“We have several cutting-edge laboratories studying various aspects of these precious samples and testing hypotheses about their origins and how they fit into the modern context of planetary science.
“Research on inert gases is a great example because it contains not only a lot of information about the modern implantation of material from the Sun to the surface of the Moon, but also about the very origin of the Moon four and a half billion years ago. Follow the news, interesting results are ahead!”
NASA’s Ryan Zeigler, Apollo’s sample curator, oversees the gas and rock extraction process.
“A lot of people are excited,” Zeigler said. “Chip Shearer at the University of New Mexico proposed this project over a decade ago, and over the past three years we’ve had two great teams developing unique hardware to make it possible.”
The device used to extract and collect the gas, called a collector, was developed by Meshik and colleagues.
Last month, the team began a painstaking, months-long process of removing the sample, first opening the outer containment tube and trapping all the gas inside.
Zeigler and his team knew what gases were supposed to be inside the outer container and found everything to be as expected.
The tube did not appear to contain any lunar gas, indicating that the seal on the inner sample tube was probably still intact.
Two weeks ago, the team began the multi-week process of puncturing the inner container and slowly collecting any lunar gases that we hope are still inside.
Once the gas extraction process is complete, the ARES team will prepare to carefully remove the soil and rocks from their container, likely this spring.
WHAT IS THE APOLLO PROGRAM?
A NASA photograph taken on July 16, 1969, shows the massive 363-foot Apollo 11 spacecraft (Spaceship 107/Lunar Module S/Saturn 506) launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) , at 9:32. am (Eastern Time).
Apollo was a NASA program that launched in 1961 and eight years later carried the first man to the moon.
The first four flights tested equipment for the Apollo program, and six of the other seven flights managed to land on the moon.
The first manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 8, which circled the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968 but did not land.
The Apollo 9 crew spent ten days in Earth orbit and made the first manned flight of the Lunar Module, part of the Apollo rocket that would later carry Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
The Apollo 11 mission became the first moon landing on July 20, 1969.
The capsule landed in the Sea of Tranquility with mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin.
Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in orbit around the moon.
When Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, he said, “It’s one small step for a man; One giant leap for mankind.’
Apollo 12 landed later that year on November 19 in the Ocean of Storms. NASA.
Apollo 13 was supposed to be the third mission to land on the moon, but just under 56 hours into the flight, an oxygen tank explosion forced the crew to cancel the lunar landing and relocate to the Aquarius lunar module to return to Earth.
Apollo 15 was the ninth manned lunar mission in the Apollo space program and was considered at the time the most successful manned spaceflight up to that point due to its long duration and greater focus on scientific exploration than was possible in previous missions.
The last Apollo lunar landing was in 1972, when a total of 12 astronauts landed on the lunar surface.
Astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin unpacks experiments from the Lunar Module on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Photo by Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969.