Lunar sample lab at
Johnson Space Center turns 25
A truly unique facility that safely and securely stores and
maintains a national treasure will mark a key anniversary this
month.
The Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at Johnson Space Center in
Houston is NASA's chief repository for materials returned from the
moon during the Apollo era. Dedicated on July 20, 1979, the
facility marks its 25th anniversary this month.
Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions brought back 842
pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand
and dust. The spaceflights returned 2,200 separate samples from six
different exploration sites.
"These samples and their study represent the strong, continuing
science legacy of Apollo," said Dr. Carlton Allen, NASA Manager of
JSC's Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office. "New
generations of researchers are using new generations of instruments
to study the lunar rocks and soils. The Apollo missions ended over
30 years ago but, thanks to these samples, we continue to better
understand the solar system and our place in it."
Eighty percent of the 842-pound collection, most of it still in
pristine condition, is stored in the Lunar Sample Laboratory
Facility. The two-story, 14,000-square-foot facility provides
permanent storage of the lunar sample collection in a physically
secure and non-contaminating environment. It cost about $2.5
million.
The lab allocates about 200 to 400 samples each year to
scientists. Today about 90 active lunar principal investigators
worldwide, mainly from the university community, have samples.
About 60 groups worldwide have been actively requesting samples for
the past decade.
Interest in studying the samples remains high. While early
studies focused on studying them to reconstruct the overall
structure of the moon, today scientists study the lunar samples for
two primary reasons: to conduct comparative planetology studies and
to take advantage of recent improvements in analytical instruments
primarily in the field of isotope geochemistry.
"We now are convinced that we have samples from Mars among the
meteorites that have come to Earth," said Dr. Gary Lofgren, NASA
Curator of the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility and a planetary
scientist in JSC's Office of Astromaterials Research and
Exploration Science. "We have samples from the moon, and we have,
of course, samples from Earth. And we have samples of meteorites
that preceded the formation of the planets. So we have samples from
four different planetary entities. Scientists do what is called
comparative planetology. Samples from one of those four entities
are studied, and then those properties that were studied in one are
studied in another to see how properties vary among planetary
entities."
Isotope geochemistry involves studying the history of planets.
Atoms of the same element, with differing atomic numbers, are
called isotopes. Scientists study them to determine how old rocks
are, and to follow minerals as they melt and crystallize. Some
isotopic systems are based on very small quantities of elements
that require recently developed instruments to analyze.
Recently, a new lunar mineral was named in honor of a lunar
scientist at the University of Pittsburgh. The mineral is named
"Hapkeite" for Bruce Hapke who predicted many years ago that space
weathering in the form of vaporization would be an important
process on the moon. The presence of this mineral is important for
understanding the remote-sensing data collected on the moon.
Much has been learned about the moon by studying these lunar
samples, but much more remains to be learned. Future potential
return missions to gather more samples would be welcomed by
scientists worldwide.
"We have samples from only six lunar sites," said Lofgren. "Just
imagine if you had samples from only six places on Earth-there
would be a lot you would not know. Specifically, we still don't
understand the full breadth of the evolution of the moon. We need a
broader range of samples to date to capture the history of the
evolution of the planet."
Video to accompany this release will be available on the NASA
Television Video File. NASA TV is on AMC-9, transponder 9C, C-Band,
at 85 degrees west longitude, frequency 3880.0 MHz, polarization
vertical, audio monaural at 6.80 MHz.