[ad_1]
"By studying these precious lunar samples for the first time, a new generation of scientists will help us deepen our understanding of our lunar neighbor and prepare for the next era of exploration of the moon and beyond," he said. said Thomas Zurbuchen, assistant administrator of Science at NASA. Mission Direction, in a statement. "This exploration will bring with it new unique samples from the world's best laboratories."
The three samples from the last three Apollo missions have never been exposed to our Earth's atmosphere. Six of the nine teams will study the Apollo 17 sample, delivered to Earth in a sealed vacuum training tube that astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan struck on the Moon's surface to collect a nucleus in 1972.
It is about 1.8 kilos of layers of rocks such as they were found on the moon. The sample is stored at Johnson Space Center of NASA since December 1972.
The other teams will study samples stored frozen or stored in helium during the last lunar missions. The Apollo missions went to the equatorial region of the moon, so all the samples came from a similar area, but previous studies using orbital data revealed that the moon had a complex geology, including rocks and undetermined minerals from Apollo samples.
The immaculate samples were kept for a reason.
"The returned samples represent an investment for the future.These samples have been deliberately preserved so that we can take advantage of today 's more sophisticated and sophisticated technology to answer questions that we do not have. We did not know what we needed to ask, "Lori Glaze, Acting Director of Planetary Science of the NASA Division, said in a statement.
The nine teams will include researchers from the NASA Ames Research Center, the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, the University of Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, US Naval Research Laboratory, University of New Mexico and Mount Holyoke. College and Institute of Planetary Sciences.
Before the samples are opened, researchers will work with Johnson Space Center conservation staff to determine the best way to avoid contamination.
The teams will study various aspects of the samples, including conducting an experiment begun 50 years ago by studying the storage of water in the radiated environment of the moon's surface. Another team will study the geological history of the site studied at Apollo 11, a cold trap in which the water could freeze. This is the first time that such a sample is studied in the laboratory.
Other aspects include the process of "space aging" of objects on the surface of the moon, the conservation of small organic molecules on the moon, the extent to which the rare gases of the sample can determine the age, hydrogenated minerals present in the soil, the impact of meteorites on the environment. the geology of the moon, how airless objects are affected by the space environment and the tiny glass beads that formed during an old eruption on the moon.
"The pearls are formed by the rapid cooling of droplets from explosive lunar fire fountains like those seen in Hawaii," Darby Dyar, an experienced scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and selected by NASA, said in a statement. "We will map the changes from the core to the edge that reveal the pressures of hydrogen and oxygen inside the moon and before, during and after the eruption."
[ad_2]
Source link