NASA to Study Untouched Moon Samples From Apollo Missions

  Photo Credit:Eugene A.cerman apollo 17 commander 

NASA to Study Untouched Moon Samples From Apollo Missions

US space organization NASA has chosen nine groups to think about immaculate examples gathered from the Moon by the Apollo missions during the 1970s and cautiously put away for almost 50 years. 

A sum of $8 million (generally Rs. 55.5 crores) has been granted to the groups, NASA said in an announcement. 

"By considering these valuable lunar examples out of the blue, another age of researchers will help advance our comprehension of our lunar neighbor and plan for the following time of investigation of the Moon and past," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC. 

Six of the nine groups will take a gander at one of the three staying lunar examples, from Apollo missions 15, 16, and 17, which have never been presented to Earth's air. 

The examples these groups will contemplate were conveyed to Earth vacuum-fixed from the Moon by Apollo 17 space travelers Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan in 1972. 

These include around 800 grams of material, still encased in a "drive tube" that was beat into the lunar regolith to gather a center of material. 

That center jam the stones as well as the stratigraphy from underneath the surface so the present researchers can, in a lab, think about the stone layers precisely as they existed on the Moon, NASA said. 

The center has been cautiously put away at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, since December 1972. 

"Returned tests are an interest later on. These examples were purposely spared so we can exploit the present further developed and complex innovation to respond to addresses we didn't realize we expected to ask," said Lori Glaze, acting chief of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington, DC. 


The nine groups chose are from NASA Ames Research Center/Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, NASA Ames, NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, NASA Goddard, University of Arizona, University of California Berkeley, US Naval Research Laboratory, University of New Mexico and the Mount Holyoke College/Planetary Science Institute.