During the Apollo missions , NASA vigorously set aside some lunar materials knowing succeeding scientist would likely be considerably equipped to canvass them . Now , nearly 50 year later , the space agency is giving a select grouping of investigator the sinful chance to study these unopened and untarnished samples .
Nineproposalsto field of study unopened Apollo samples were selected by NASA under its Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis program , or ANGSA , agree to a NASA Goddardpress release . The lunar materials were collected during Apollo 15 ( the 4th lunar mission , which began on July 26 , 1971 ) and Apollo 17 ( the 6th and final lunar missionary station , which commenced on December 7 , 1972 ) . Some of the returned sample were never open to prevent possible contamination , while other lunar material , after some initial processing , were re - seal and placed in stale storage .
The point of all this was to guarantee the integrity of lunar materials for later written report , allowing future scientists — equipped with new engineering and new questions — to take a look . turn over that no lunar materials have rejoin to Earth since 1972 , this was a remarkably prescient idea .
Among the many goals of the ANGSA program is to do piece of work that will inform future lunar mission planned for the amount decades . The researchers will seek to learn if the methods used to store the Apollo materials actually worked , keep them as pure and untainted as possible . The work will also be relevant to scientists put to work on the OSIRIS - male monarch mission , in which samples collected from asteroid Bennu will be returned to Earth in March 2021 .
Astrochemist Jamie Elsila from Goddard ’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory will take one of the teams selected for the broadcast .
“ We are searching for small constitutive molecules that are in all likelihood present at very low concentrations in the lunar samples , ” Elsila told Gizmodo . “ In the past 50 years , our analytic sensitivity has greatly improved , and fresh methods have been make grow to set apart the compound that we are interested in , giving us an power for detection that was n’t potential 50 years ago . It ’s really a matter of more advanced instrumentation and method acting that let us find and measure these molecules now . ”
Elsila ’s team will study volatile organic compounds — the precursor to amino Elvis — in the sampling , which are known to be in the fabric ground on previous subject area . The researchers want to watch if the constitutive compounds exist at slap-up quantities in the shadowed region of the Moon , and whether the abundances of those compound vary according to depth , among other affair .
“ This will help us comfortably empathize lunar chemistry , ” she said . “ Scientists were asking dubiousness about constituent compound when the Apollo samples were returned , but our unexampled instruments will help us reply them in way of life that were n’t uncommitted then . ”
In addition , Elsila ’s squad will essay how the sample might have been bear on by the curation procedures used . For example , they ’d like to know if storing the stuff in a vacuum or in inhuman storage preserved volatile compound better than standard conditions , namely storage at room temperature under clean menstruate nitrogen . The answers will help in designing curation plans for succeeding come back sample , she said .
Jessica Barnes , a researcher at the University of Arizona ’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory , will partake in this curation investigation . To that death , she will be given admittance to material collected during Apollo 17 — specifically sample 71036 , which contains near 4 ounces of John Rock .
“ The question we need to respond is , are we measuring the true Moon key signature ? Or are there terrestrial influence that have affected the sample distribution during their storage ? ” said Barnes in apress release . “ The sweetheart of a frozen sample is that it ’s been restrain curated in a different means from the sample stored at room temperature . We could not do this enquiry without open up the glacial samples . ”
With her UA colleagues , Barnes will implant the tilt in rosin and slice up it into microscopically tenuous sections for chemic analysis . These slices will also be made available to succeeding researchers .
Another Goddard team selected for the ANGSA projection will be led by Natalie Curran and Barbara Cohen from Goddard ’s Mid - Atlantic Noble Gas Research Lab ( MNGRL ) . They ’ll be helped by researchers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Institution . By using noble accelerator , Curran and Cohen desire to learn more about the Moon ’s geologic story , such as the length of time the samples — and maybe constitutive chemical compound — were exposed on the Earth’s surface . They ’re also planning to study outcome such as encroachment and landslip .
“ have the hazard to work on these samples is like participating in a completely new mission to the Moon , ” said Curran in a press statement . “ Even though these are Apollo samples , they ’ve never been opened , and we do n’t make out what surprisal are in fund for us . I ’m excited to have a part in our genesis ’s earned run average of exploration of the Moon . ”
Astronauts have n’t been on the Moon in near 50 years , but owe to some excellent farsightedness , scientific research into the Moon can continue . We thirstily expect the resolution .
Correction : A late version of this clause wrongly express that NASA had choose two squad to study the lunar samples . In fact , nine teams were choose . We regret the mistake .
[ NASA , University of Arizona ]
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