NASA scientists study 50- time-old lunar samples ahead of Artemis operations

Ahead of the Artemis operations that will shoot humans back to the moon, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center entered samples of the lunar face that were saved in a freezer at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston since Apollo 17 astronauts returned them to Earth in December 1972.

The exploration is part of the space agency’s Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program (ANGSA), which is an trouble to study the samples returned from the Apollo Program in medication for the Artemis operations to the Moon’s south pole.

The process of getting the samples from Johnson to experimenters at Goddard isn't simple. It began over four times ago when NASA’s Julie Mitchell and her Artemis curation platoon at Johnson began designing and retrofitting a installation to reuse the samples. They employed a new fashion that could be applied to unborn lunar operations.

Samples were also transferred to experimenters at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and the University of Arizona, Tucson

“ We started this in early 2018 and there’s been a lot of specialized challenges that we ’ve had to overcome to get to this point. This was seen as a practice run for preparing a installation for unborn cold sample processing. By doing this work we ’re not just easing Artemis disquisition, but we ’re easing unborn sample return and mortal disquisition into the rest of the solar system,” said Mitchell, in a press statement.

After the installation was ready, Apollo sample watchman Ryan Zeigler and his platoon had to acclimatize to the unique conditions designed by Mitchell’s platoon to keep the samples firmed during processing. These included dropped visibility due to frost and challenges manipulating the sample while working with thick gloves in a nitrogen- purified glove box. All of this took place inside a walk-in freezer maintained at minus 20 degrees celsius.

The capability to keep samples firmed will be important for Artemis as astronauts could potentially return ice samples from the Moon’s south pole. Once the frozen samples were reused and subdivided at Johnson by lunar sample processor Jeremy Kent, the samples were express packed in a cooler with dry ice, opened at Goddard and stored in a secure freezer.

Jamie Elsila, a exploration scientist at the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at Goddard, is fastening on the study of small, unpredictable organic composites during her exploration and analysis of the samples. Former exploration has shown that some lunar samples contain amino acids, which are essential to life on earth.

Natalie Curran, top investigator for the Mid Atlantic Noble Gas Research Lab at Goddard, will concentrate on understanding the history that the samples endured during their continuance on the moon. Unlike on earth, the Moon has a harsh terrain that doesn't have an atmosphere to cover the face from exposure to space.