Nearly 50 years since being brought to Earth, lunar samples from the Apollo 17 mission have finally been unveiled at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, United States. This is one of the last unopened samples from the last Apollo mission to land humans on the Moon.
"We had the opportunity to open this very valuable sample that had been stored for 50 years under a vacuum and we were finally able to see what treasures were hidden inside," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
The sample was collected by NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt in December 1972 when they hammered a 14-inch cylindrical drive tube into a landslide deposit in the Taurus-Littrow Valley. The two astronauts sealed the tube with a vacuum while it was still on the surface of the Moon.
After the return mission to Earth, the captured samples were stored in a second protective tube in a special cabinet at Johnson's Moon laboratory, so that they would not be disturbed for 50 years until this week.
What's in it?
The sample, known as 73001, contains lunar soil and rock fragments that can provide scientists with a record of the Moon's geological history. Another sample of Apollo 17 opened for the first time in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing.
Some of the lunar samples that Apollo brought with him were intentionally left uncovered so that future generations with better technology could study them and unlock more information about Earth's natural satellite.
"We have quite a lot of really good nuclei giving us new information," Schmitt said in a video shared by NASA in an interview with Science Live.
"It was anticipated early on in the Apollo program that analytical technology would mature and become much more sophisticated over time. In fact, Apollo was never-ending for lunar scientists to research," he continued.
Schmitt was a geologist, and the only civilian and scientist to ever land on the Moon. As many as 11 other people who have landed on the Moon, are considered active military members.
How to open the Moon sample
Before this Moon sample was opened, the team used X-ray CT technology to scan a 3D image of the sample inside the tube at the University of Texas at Austin.
"This will be a permanent record of what the material looked like inside the core before it was pushed out and divided into half a centimeter," said Ryan Zeigler, curator of the Apollo samples.
"The drive tube is very full, which is one of the things we learn with CT scans, and it caused a bit of a complication to how we originally planned to remove it, but we've been able to adapt using this scan," he said.
In February, the team carefully opened the outer canister to collect any gas that might be present.
"We have extracted gas from this core, and we hope it will help scientists as they try to understand the moon's gas signature by looking at different aliquots (samples taken for chemical analysis)," Zeigler said.
Preliminary scanning and analysis, as well as artificial core unlocking, prepares scientists so they don't find anything unexpected when it comes time to open samples.
Then, they opened the tube in a sealed glove box at NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division in Houston.
Arms restrained by oversized gloves from the glove box, Juliane Gross, deputy curator of Apollo samples, says it's a painstaking process, but well worth it.
"We do this step by step, trying not to lose all the little parts and screws," says Gross. "We are the first to actually see this land for the first time. It is the best thing in the world," he said.
Opening this sample could prepare NASA to collect new lunar material when it sends humans back to the Moon later this decade via the Artemis program, named after the Apollo twins.
"Terrestrial samples and lunar samples are very different, so the Artemis team took that into account when designing their tool. They didn't start from scratch. They started with Apollo 17 and what worked really well, developed towards the Artemis mission," Zeigler said.
The new samples collected during the Artemis mission could later help scientists better understand the evolution of the Moon.