Moon
Rock FAQs
To many, going to the moon was just
history, and stale at that. But if you ever get a chance, climb into a World
War II B25 or 29, and just look at the cockpit array -- it was top of the line,
the best technology working at the time.
The Apollo equipment was just the same.
The highest of technical excellence, the cutting edge... and yes the bleeding
edge also -- and nobody yet has repeated the feat of lifting off from this
planet, taking astronauts to the Moon, landing, exploring, and returning. Period. Nobody.
And so, what do we know about this
feat?
And what did we learn?
How Many Missions Went to the Moon?
Six different Apollo missions gathered moon samples, beginning with Apollo 11,
which landed on the moon July 20, 1969.
Apollo 11 clears launch tower -- NASA S69-39526
The last Lunar Mission was Apollo 17 in
1974.
The only night launch done during Apollo. NASA 72-H-1515
All but Apollo 13 successfully landed
on the moon and were able to collect and bring back
lunar samples.
This is the first lunar sample that was photographed in detail in the Lunar Receiving laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center. This photograph shows a granular, fine-grained, mafic (iron magnesium rich) rock. (July 26, 1969)
Picture courtesy of NASA.
And remember: There was a space race
going on between the U.S. And the Soviet Union.
The Russians had a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet
Union between 1959 and 1976.
One of the major achievements of the
Russian Luna program, with Luna
16, Luna 20 and Luna
24 spacecrafts, was the collection of lunar soil and to return them to Earth, by 1970. The program returned
0.326 kg of lunar
samples. The Luna missions were the first space-exploration sample
return missions to rely solely on advanced robotics.
Luna 15 Space craft. Under terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Luna
15, also designed to return soil samples
from the lunar surface, holds the significance of undergoing its mission at the
same time as the historic Apollo 11 mission. Luna 15 was a last-ditch attempt to steal thunder
from the potential American success, for it would have returned lunar samples
to Earth before the Apollo astronauts could do so.
However, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were already on the lunar surface when Luna 15 began
its descent, and the spacecraft crashed into a mountain minutes later.
However, in the intervening time
interval, the two countries have shared samples for study.
How Many Moon Rocks are There?
In all, 840+ pounds of rocks were brought back from the moon. The samples
ranged from loose dirt to large rocks.
Some were made into "thin
sections," which are slices of rock only microns thick that can be viewed
through a microscope.
This thin section is Apollo 12 lunar sample number 12057.27, under polarized light.
The lavender minerals are pyrexene; the black mineral is ilmenite; the white and brown, feldspar;
and the remainder, olivine. NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
Where Are the Moon Rocks Kept and Can I Get to Touch One?
Most of the moon rocks are in Houston, Texas at the Johnson Space Center's
Building 31, called the Lunar Facility. It was designed as a safe, secure,
clean building.
Lunar Sample Processing Facility NASA JSC
About 20 percent of the moon rocks are
kept nearby in another building as a sort of safe deposit box, in case disaster were to strike Building 31.
A few of the moon rocks are on exhibit
at various museums around the country. At the American Museum of Natural
History in New York, you can see three rock samples. The Smithsonian in
Washington, DC has a few samples you can actually touch, but from years of big
and little hands touching them, they've gotten pretty dirty!
Are Moon Rocks Like Earth Rocks?
"Moon rocks are absolutely
unique," says Dr. David McKay, Chief Scientist for Planetary Science and
Exploration at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). McKay is a member of the
group that oversees the Lunar
Sample Laboratory Facility at JSC where most
of the Moon rocks are stored. "They differ from Earth rocks in many
respects," he added.
"For example," explains Dr.
Marc Norman, a lunar geologist at the University of Tasmania, "lunar
samples have almost no water trapped in their crystal structure, and common
substances such as clay minerals that are ubiquitous on Earth are totally
absent in Moon rocks."
"We've found particles of fresh
glass in Moon rocks that were produced by explosive volcanic activity and by
meteorite impacts over 3 billion years ago," added Norman. "The
presence of water on Earth rapidly breaks down such volcanic glass in only a
few million years."
The moon has many different types of
rock. But most are breccias -- hard,
solid rocks that have broken up and formed back together in different
combinations.
Since the moon is constantly changing
from the impact of meteors, breccias are continually being formed. Breccias
aren't unique to the moon. Volcanic areas on earth have a lot of breccias, as
well. Many of the moon rocks are a very dense hard rock called basalt that is also a very common rock
on earth. For example, most of Hawaii is basalt.
The biggest surprise about moon rocks
is that over 80 percent of the moon seems to be light colored feldspar, which is also the most common
rock on earth.
This supports a theory that at one time
the entire surface of the moon was molten, just one huge magma ocean 300-400
miles deep! As it cooled, the lighter minerals, like feldspar, floated to the
top. The heavier ones, like the darker colored basalt, stayed below the
surface.
A Few Words About Sample 61016...
61016, at 11.7 kg, was the largest rock collected during the
Apollo missions. It was nick-named "Big Muley"
after one member of the geology support team.
Apollo 16 landed in the light-colored
highlands of the Moon. These highlands regions are generally higher in
elevation and composed of older rocks relative to the volcanic plains.
These rocks are rich in aluminum and
calcium, two of the elements found in the plagioclase mineral anorthite.
This specimen is comprised of four
different rock types:
- material of basaltic composition melted
during an impact;
- an impact-shocked anorthosite,
thought to be from ancient lunar crust;
- an impact shock-melted glass rich in
aluminum and calcium; and
- a darker glass coating.
 Some components in this rock may be as old as 4.5 billion
years. Zap pits, or tiny craters created by micrometeorites striking the lunar
surface at very high speeds, are prominent on one side of this rock, but absent
on the other.
Since the pitless side was facing up when the astronauts found the rock, it must have only
recently been turned over by natural processes.
Did We Go to the Moon Just to Get the Moon Rocks?
Even though the moon rocks have taught us and are continuing to teach us so
much about the moon and the earth, the Apollo missions weren't originally
planned as scientific studies.
After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik
in 1957, the US launched the space program. It was a time of international
rivalry between the USSR and the US, and once we started sending men into
space, America was determined to put a man on the moon before the USSR and
before the 60s ended.
As the race to the moon wore on,
scientists pushed to add a scientific mission to the Apollo program. The
astronauts didn't know much about geology, so they had training in New Mexico,
Hawaii, and California, places geologists thought would be most like the moon.
Out of 12 people to walk on the surface of the moon, the only actual geologist
to go was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was on the very last Apollo
mission.
Did the Rocks Come from Different Parts of the Moon?
Yes. Each mission built on what was learned in the flights before it. When
Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility there were still a lot of unknowns
about the surface of the moon.
That area was chosen because it
appeared to be a safe, flat place to land, but at the time no one had any idea
how deep the dust would be on the moon or whether the module would sink when it
landed. For Apollo 12, scientists studied photos and telescope images to find a
site that appeared safe, but was more geologically complex.
What Did the Moon Rocks Tell us
about the Man in the Moon?
What we call the Man in the Moon is actually a pattern of basalt that fills up
the large craters, or impact basins, that were formed when meteors hit the
moon.
This "filling" process is interesting:
When a meteor hits the moon, solid rock below the surface of the basin melts
and the dark rock seeps up to the surface, like in a volcano. These basins are
called seas (Mares, in Latin). When
man first began wondering about the moon, he thought those large areas were
filled with water.
Everyone wanted to know whether there
really was water on the moon, but the moon rocks showed us that not only is
there no water on the moon now, but there never was a single drop!
Were People Afraid of the Moon Rocks at First?
Yes. People were worried the rocks might contain microbes and germs that could
contaminate the earth, and so, after the first Apollo mission (11), the crew
had to spend 21 days in quarantine.
In fact, when the astronauts, after
splash down, entered the rubber boat, they were scrubbed down with an iodine
solution by the recovery swimmers; the astronauts, in turn, did the same for
the frogmen. While a helicopter lifted the crew to the U.S.S. Hornet, the spacecraft got its scrub down before it,
too, was lifted to the ship.
The astronauts stepped from the
aircraft onto the carrier deck and straight into the mobile isolation unit.
When
no life whatsoever was found in the rocks, the concern switched to keeping the
rocks from being contaminated by us.
Scientists in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, working through glove ports, examine a
moon rock.
How Did the Moon Rocks Teach us
about the Earth?
Before the Apollo missions to the moon, there were quite a few theories about
how the moon formed. After studying the moon rocks and finding what ways they
are similar to and what ways they are different from earth's rocks, a new
theory stands out.
This theory says that since the moon
and the earth are very closely related, the moon must in some way have formed
from the earth.
Around four and a half billion years
ago when the earth was forming, a huge planetary chunk of material about the
size of Mars hit the earth.
Copyright 2008 by Don Dixon / cosmographica.com
This caused an enormous explosion, and
part of the material which blew off formed the moon.
Here's the Process
A Mars-sized planet collided with the
early Earth as it was forming:
- The iron cores of the two planets
merged.
- Less dense material was ejected by the
collision.
- The less dense material merged to form
the Moon.
Evidence for the collision
Here is some evidence for the collision
theory:
- The Earth has an iron core but the Moon does not.
- Moon rocks are similar in composition to rocks found on
Earth.
Why Did We Stop Exploring The Moon?
According to Carolyn Porco, of the New York Times, there is an opinion widely
held within the space-exploration community that the Nixon administration's
termination of the program that built the Saturn V Moon rocket was a gargantuan
mistake.
She explains, "One of the biggest
challenges in exploring space is propulsion -- that is, getting from point A to
B efficiently, safely and quickly. And when the cargo is human, the challenges
are even greater. One of our crowning technological achievements during the
1960s was the Apollo program and, in particular, the development of the Saturn
V rocket.
The Saturn V was the largest, most
powerful vehicle the United States had ever built.
Launch of Apollo 11 On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong,
Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blasted off for the moon.
The Saturn V rocket and Spacecraft section in the picture
above was 363 feet high. NASA Photo-KSC-69PC-442,
labeling, G. A. Becker...
It had a launching capacity more than
five times greater, a developmental cost 25 percent lower and a
build-and-operate cost less than half of that of today's space shuttle.
But unfortunately, after the Apollo
program was terminated, we went nowhere, and largely for political reasons.
To read about the enormous cost to the
nation because of this misstep, click here.
When Are we Going Back to the Moon?
In January of 2004, President Bush called on NASA to "gain a new foothold
on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own."
This would be based on a series of
goals.
- First, complete the International Space
Station by 2010.
- Second, develop a new manned
exploration vehicle, called the Crew Exploration Vechicle (CEV), and conduct its first manned mission no later than 2014.
- Third, return to the moon by 2020, for
use as the launching point for missions beyond.
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"We do not know where this
journey will end, yet we know
this: Human beings are headed
into the cosmos."--President
George W. Bush
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