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Moon NASA

After 50 Years, Vacuum-Sealed Container From 1972 Moon Landing Will Finally Be Opened (gizmodo.com) 51

Posted by EditorDavid from the wrinkle-in-time dept.
"Apollo mission planners were really smart. Recognizing that future scientists will have better tools and richer scientific insights, they refrained from opening a portion of the lunar samples returned from the historic Apollo missions," writes Gizmodo.

"One of these sample containers, after sitting untouched for 50 years, is now set to be opened." The sample in question was collected by Gene Cernan in 1972. The Apollo 17 astronaut was working in the Taurus-Littrow Valley when he hammered a 28-inch-long (70 cm) tube into the surface, which he did to collect samples of lunar soil and gas. The lower half of this canister was sealed while Cernan was still on the Moon. Back on Earth, the canister was placed in yet another vacuum chamber for good measure. Known as the 73001 Apollo sample container, it remains untouched to this very day.

But the time has come to open this vessel and investigate its precious cargo, according to a European Space Agency press release. The hope is that lunar gases might be present inside, specifically hydrogen, helium, and other light gases. Analysis of these gases could further our understanding of lunar geology and shed new light on how to best store future samples, whether they be gathered on asteroids, the Moon, or Mars.

Like I said, Apollo mission planners were really clever — but they didn't exactly explain how future scientists were supposed to extract the presumed gases from the vacuum-sealed container. That task is now the responsibility of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program (ANGSA), which manages these untouched treasures. In this case, ANGSA tasked the European Space Agency, among several other institutions, to figure out a way to safely release this trapped gas, marking the first time that ESA has been involved in the opening of samples returned from the Apollo program...

The ANGSA consortium spent the past 16 months working on the problem, and the solution, dubbed the "Apollo can opener," is now ready to rock.
Sometime in the next few weeks the gas will finally be decanted into multiple containers, and then sent to specialized labs around the world.
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After 50 Years, Vacuum-Sealed Container From 1972 Moon Landing Will Finally Be Opened More

After 50 Years, Vacuum-Sealed Container From 1972 Moon Landing Will Finally Be Opened

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  • Truly amazing foresight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday December 19, 2021 @10:16PM (#62098563)

    To know that it would be over 50 years before we got back to the moon. I remember thinking we would have had a permanent colony long before 2000.

    • Re:Truly amazing foresight (Score:5, Funny)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday December 19, 2021 @11:49PM (#62098685)

      I remember thinking we would have had a permanent colony long before 2000.

      I remember thinking we would have lost the moon in 1999.

    • insurance policy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Monday December 20, 2021 @12:14AM (#62098709) Journal

      Call it what it is. This was an insurance policy.

      If we had established a permanent colony by 2000, then these time-sealed samples would have had little purpose other than to take up storage space. However, if the national space program managed to lose trajectory, then these samples could prove to be more useful after several decades of further scientific advancements. And so, here we are, cashing in on the insurance policy our predecessors were so wise to create.

      Humanity will be putting boots back on the moon soon enough. But at this point, I personally doubt that any nationstate is going to beat the private market there. There just isn't enough "will in Washington" to do this sort of work anymore - ie, not top of mind for the masses means it doesn't generate headlines/donations//re-elections, so our "representatives" simply don't care all that much. The commercialization of space started just within the last few decades, and corporations have already created launch boosters that safely return to a planetary landing pad for reuse - something that no government bothered to create before them.

      Based on past performance, I'd put money down that SpaceX has the first functional permanent moon base. It's a bet, but lately it feels like a safe one. It's going to be really interesting to watch space expansion play out, given the history lessons of the "American Wild West". The future favors the bold and the strong.

      • Re:insurance policy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Hope Thelps ( 322083 ) on Monday December 20, 2021 @07:25AM (#62099153)

        If we had established a permanent colony by 2000, then these time-sealed samples would have had little purpose other than to take up storage space.

        In the event of a permanent base or even just frequent travel between moon and earth, being able to compare pre-human arrival and post-human arrival state of the moon would seem valuable.

        • In the event of a permanent base or even just frequent travel between moon and earth, being able to compare pre-human arrival and post-human arrival state of the moon would seem valuable.

          This can be strengthened further.

          To suppose that all lunar samples are identical, have precisely the same information, is absurd. Unless you organize a survey effort to return to the exact same location, and collect sample in the same place using similar methods, then this sample is unique and contains unique data. Since we spent money (and risked lives) to sample this particular site, keeping samples for future analysis in simply sound planning no matter what future exploration programs are funded. It will

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I guess they could see the writing on the wall back then. The moon turned out to be not very interesting at all. Very little up there in terms of resources, and while it was once considered the ultimate military high ground that idea was dead by the early 70s.

        Since the USSR didn't send anyone there the race came to an end. Now we have China looking at moon and Mars missions, but I worry it's all about prestige rather than about establishing sustainable access to space and other worlds. Mars is interesting b

      • But at this point, I personally doubt that any nationstate is going to beat the private market there.

        I dunno...it appears China has a good bit of interest and will to do this and a LOT of other projects.

        The US is getting left behind in so many ways.

    • Re:Truly amazing foresight (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday December 20, 2021 @03:28AM (#62098897) Homepage Journal

      It would have taken remarkable foresight to predict that we wouldn't return in 50 years, but by 1972 it was pretty clear we wouldn't be returning to the Moon any time soon -- not for at least 20 years, or more likely 25.

      Remember, the Apollo Program was actually *cut short*. Apollo 17 wasn't supposed to be the last mission, there were supposed to be three more, exploring the Copernicus and Tycho craters and exploring some possibly volcanic features near the Apollo 15 site. Scientifically that was very interesting stuff, and the marginal costs of the extra missions at that point would have been a bargain. But there wasn't any money for even that.

      By 1972 anyone who understood the difference between stunning scale of the Apollo budget (it gobbled up 2.5% of US GDP for ten years) and the amount of money on the horizon for manned space flight would have seen the writing on the wall. Budgets were lean now, and the lion's share of the manned budget would go to the Shuttle. That would take 10 years to get flying, and then you'd reasonably spend five or ten years scaling the program up to a launch pace that justified turning to a radical new system. First we'd made access to orbit cheap and routine, and then exploit that to make a new program that would make lunar exploration cheap and routine too.

      It didn't work out because the Shuttle never managed to make access to space cheap and routine. The program was envisioned to hit a launch pace of 50 launches/year, but in *total* it only had 135 launches over 30 years, two of which failed. But in an alternate universe that looked like what people expected -- a successful Shuttle program and a still-existing Soviet Union maybe turning its eye back to the Moon -- you can easily imagine a US return to the Moon in the mid 90s.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        The main problem with the Moon program was that it did little for much money. Yes, it yielded some valuable results, but they were expensive to gather. As soon as the "We put Man on the Moon" was wearing off, the returns on investment looked bleak. Compare the US$ 2.1 billion (10 billion in today's money) with the results gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope for US$ 0.2 billion dollars, which even including all the service missions costed less than US$ 1 billion in today's money!

        And that's why a Moon

    • Well, I still wonder how NASA could transport 3 astronauts to the moon, and get them TWICE thru the Van Allen belt (fatal dose of extreme radiation) ALIVE. Until NASA has proven this, I will NOT take this âsealed container from the moonâ(TM) serious. https://science.thewire.in/the... [thewire.in]
  • according to a European Space Agency press release.???

    what happened to NASA?

  • canister (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The canister itself may have some gasses from Earth so I hope the have a control tube from which to subtract that.

  • One word: Transformers. :-)

    NGL, that would be the most 2021 way to end 2021.

  • I hope they wear masks. Wouldn't wanna give Covid-19 to the moon bugs trapped in that tube.

  • Smart or Pessimists? (Score:3)

    by countach ( 534280 ) on Monday December 20, 2021 @01:09AM (#62098755)

    Were they smart or were they pessimists to think that nobody else would have been to the moon since then? Or I guess perhaps realists, given the lack of moon landings in the last 50 years... I guess we could call them prescient... which is remarkable given the wild optimism of the times.

  • ...that this is NOT a good idea

  • Imagine letting one rip on Apollo 13 straight into that container then sealing it up, knowing that NASA will be storing your fart at great expense for 50 years, and that you'll be dead by the time everyone gets punked when they finally open it up and choke on its dank ripe aromas. Best prank of all time!

  • Wow, they missed a great acronym opportunity when they didn't name it

    the Apollo Next Generation Sample Taskforce.

  • That's really interesting, but I could not find any information about this container (containers?) that appeared earlier. Are there other containers? What are their numbers? Why NASA told nothing about it?

  • But wait until the moon virus recombines with Omicron and transforms into the Lunacron variant.

  • I think they wonâ(TM)t find any surprise
  • It's the one clearly marked, "Andromeda strain. DANGER. DO NOT OPEN." They think it's a joke.

  • Wouldn't it be something if they open it and find some bugs. Roaches or something.

    I hope ESA learns something from the samples.

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