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Moon Rocks Still In Demand After Almost 40 Years
During NASA's Apollo missions to the moon, roughly 842 pounds of rocks were collected from the lunar surface. Scientific demand for the rocks has always been high, and a review board tracks and sends out hundreds of samples each year, even now, decades after the rocks were brought to Earth. They've provided researchers with a wealth of information about the entire solar system. From the NYTimes:
"The samples have confirmed that asteroid and meteor impacts, not volcanism, created the vast majority of craters that define the Moon's topography, while a constant barrage of meteorites, micrometeorites and radiation melted and pureed the bedrock to create the blanket of fine-grained soil and dust -- known as regolith -- that now cloaks the lunar surface. And knowing the ages of Moon rocks, which can be computed to within 20 million years, has enabled scientists to establish a baseline that allows them to date geologic features throughout the solar system. The surface of the Earth, one of the solar system's youngest topographies, is constantly changing, as it is faulted, folded, shaped and reshaped by eruptions, earthquakes and erosion. By contrast, the Moon is as old as it gets."
When we go go back: Take a shovel and bucket.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I have touched Mars. Repeatedly.
Tucked away in a tiny corner of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, ignored by most visitors, is a small display of a tiny rock.
You can touch this rock.
The description of the rock states that it is a meteorite from Mars that was collected in Antarctica.
Even though the surface of earth changes, but I dont thing the stuff (rocks etc) just disappear. They still remain on earth. So, why can't they be used to find anything about the universe?
Mainly because bits of the surface are constantly being subducted into the core of the earth and melting into the general magma soup. The entire surface is also constantly subjected to erosion and weathering, which breaks rock down both physically and chemically. They are slow processes, but we're talking about ~4.5 billion years. That is enough time for pretty well the entire surface of the earth to have been destroyed and reformed several times over.
A sample from the moon is largely an unaltered and uncontaminated record from the moment it first solidified as rock.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
One word: volcanism.
The Earth has it, the moon does not.
Elementary geology tell us that the composition and structure of the rocks changes when it undergoes igneous or metamorphic transformations, meaning we can not trust anything that we can reach to be in its "original" state. If nothing we can access on Earth is guaranteed to be "original", then no, it doesn't tell us a whole lot about the origins of the Universe.
The moon, on the other hand, is pretty much the same as it was when it first formed (save for the changes caused by impacts and radiation), making it a much more reliable record of "how things were."
I worked in the photo labs at Johnson Space Center (Nasa Houston) back in 1972 and was told that when Apollo 11 returned, Nasa had the Lunar Receiving Laboratory set up like a Fort Dietrich style germ warfare lab.
I've heard the same. Found this written by a Judy Allton from Lockheed regarding the return of moon rocks:
In 1965 a committee of the Space Science Board reviewed the need for a lunar sample receiving laboratory and recommended a laboratory of restricted scope. This committee also raised the question of quarantine for lunar samples until they proved to be biologically harmless.
"But as plans for managing the samples developed, NASA came under pressure from space biologists and the U.S. Public Health Service to protect earth against the introduction of alien microorganisms that might exist in lunar soil. What would have been a small laboratory designed to protect lunar samples against contamination grew into an elaborate, expensive quarantine facility that greatly complicated operations on the early lunar landing missions." (Compton, 1989).
It seems like paranoia, but despite the expense and pain it's a healthy one, in my opinion. There may come a time when such restraint really does save our asses. Being in my late 30's I wonder if it will be in my lifetime, however :-) Rest of it at:
http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnjul94/hist25.htm
-Aaron
some of the NYT comments are worse. The guy touted a lunar sample mission by the Russians and they certainly didn't bring any lunar rocks back during the height of the space race and quite honestly I don't think anyone has brought anything back since the astronauts picked them and returned them.
Some of the other stuff, too, is the claim that 800 lbs of lunar geology is enough to tell the story of the moon. We still get cannot get the earth's story straight, geologically speaking, and we're standing on the samples! There's been no systematic mineral assay, no samples in the mountains, no samples in the big caves thought to be on the moon, no samples from the polar regions and really, not much at all.
This is my sig.
Fuel requirements scale proportionately to payload weight
No, actually it does not scale proportionately. The fuel requirements grow exponentially with the mass of the payload for all self-propelled spacecraft due to the rocket equation. For the rate of growth to be linear the energy for the propulsion would have to come from outside the system (e.g. ground-based).
A little-known fact: It is against Federal law for a private citizen to own any piece of a legitimate moon rock. If you own one (or have bought one), you are required by law to contact NASA immediately and hand it over; without delay.