Post by Old Techo on Jun 22, 2023 19:49:57 GMT 10
I often wonder whether some of the stuff that I post is actually of interest or just takes up space.
It strikes me as something that could be chatted about around the camp fire.
From Quora...
Mark Shulmann
Studied the Apollo program all my life.
NASA has opened the sealed bag of moon rocks taken off the moon 50 years ago. What do you think they will do with them?
The question is a little flawed. There isn’t a single sealed bag of moon rocks — there are about 110,000 of them.
A large amount of the lunar material — soil, rocks, etc. — returned from the Moon is still untouched and stored in pristine conditions at NASA’s Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility in Houston, Texas. Each sample is carefully cataloged and photographed. The catalog contains information about exactly when and where the sample was found, and even (in the case of a rock) what position it was in before it was retrieved. The samples are stored in a nitrogen atmosphere, which is less likely to cause chemical changes in the samples than air.
NASA preserved the bulk of the samples returned from the Moon because they knew that our ability to perform research on the samples would greatly improve in the future. New instruments and analysis techniques would be developed, and even new questions — as scientists learned more about space science, they would naturally come up with questions that nobody would have thought to ask in the late 1960s. About 75% of the 842 pounds of samples returned during the Apollo program (a total of six landings) are still kept at the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility.
NASA doesn’t just “unseal” a sample now and then for the fun of it. When a scientist — anywhere in the world — comes up with a new line of research for which they need a sample, they submit a proposal to NASA, explaining the purpose of their research and what kind and size of samples they need. An independent panel reviews these proposals, and if a proposal is deemed worthwhile, NASA sends the required samples. About 40 to 50 proposals are approved each year.
In some cases the researcher is required to return the sample when the research is complete. However, some research will result in the destruction of the sample. The panel takes this into account when considering the proposal.
NASA realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to store all of its lunar samples in one place, so about 115 pounds of lunar samples are stored in a secure facility at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.