Scientists begin studying 50-year-old frozen Apollo 17 samples

The lunar surface that has been in a freezer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston since Apollo 17 astronauts returned them to Earth in December 1972 was recently received by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

This research is part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program, or ANGSA, an effort to study the samples returned from the Apollo Program in advance of the upcoming Artemis missions to the moon.

The process of getting the samples from Johnson to researchers at the University of Arizona, as well as researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The process began more than four years ago when NASA's Julie Mitchell and her Artemis team at Johnson began designing and retrofitting a facility to process the frozen Apollo 17 samples. Scientists were excited to use a technique that could be applied to future lunar missions.

There have been a lot of technical challenges that we have had to overcome to get to this point.

Mitchell said that by doing this work they are facilitating future sample return and human exploration into the rest of the solar system.

Ryan Zeigler, Apollo sample curator in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at Johnson, and his team had to adapt to the unique conditions designed by Mitchell's team to keep the samples frozen during processing. Being able to keep samples frozen will be important for Artemis as she potentially returns ice samples from the moon.

The cold makes it a lot harder to process samples, which is an important lesson for Artemis. This work gives us some lessons that we can use in Artemis.

After the samples were processed and divided at Johnson, they were sent to a cooler with dry ice and stored in a secure freezer. There is something special about receiving samples that have not been investigated in a long time.

Jamie Elsila, a research scientist in the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at Goddard, is focusing on the study of small, volatile organic compounds for her research and analysis of the sample. Some lunar samples contain essential acids that are essential to life on Earth. Her team wants to understand the origin and distribution of the sun.

The research goal is to identify and quantify these small organic volatile compounds.

The history of the samples may have experienced during their lifetime on the moon is the focus of Natalie Curran, principal investigator for the Mid Atlantic Noble Gas Research Lab. Unlike the Earth, the moon does not have an atmosphere to protect it from exposure to space.

Our work allows us to use noble gases, such as argon, helium, neon, and xenon, to measure the duration of a sample that has been exposed to cosmic rays, and this can help us understand the history of that sample.

Both Elsila and Curran have frozen and non-frozen lunar samples. When these samples were brought to Earth, a portion was stored at room temperature and the other portion was frozen, allowing for comparison between the two groups. If there are differences in the organic content, scientists will analyze the samples. Future decisions about how to store samples returned by Artemis astronauts might be influenced by understanding any variations caused by the different curation methods.

It is cool to think about all the work that went into collecting the samples on the moon and then preserving them for us to be able to analyze them.

When you think of how these samples have come from another world, how far they have traveled and the solar system history they have preserved inside of them, it always blows my mind.

More information: Learn more about how NASA studies Apollo samples and other celestial bodies at:

There is a website called Ares.jsc.nasa.gov.

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