The European Space Agency is opening a 50-year old Christmas present from the Moon this month.
A team is ready to use a piercing tool to open a Moon soil container from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The opening will allow for the recovery of precious lunar gases.
The opening and analyses of these samples now, with the technical advancements achieved since the Apollo era, can enable new scientific discoveries on the Moon. This can inspire a new generation of explorers.
Is it possible to opener?
This is the first time that the ESA has been involved in opening Apollo Moon soil samples.
The sample was collected from a slip deposit that cascaded down into the valley near the landing site. A 70 cm tube was hammered into the ground to extract a core sample.
The puncturing tool it built over 16 months is jokingly called the "Apollo can opener" and hopes to learn lessons that will assist in future missions to both the Moon and Mars. Learning more about the Moon's surface, the gas available on Earth's satellite, and how best to contain and return samples could help with NASA's upcoming Artemis Artemis.
We hope the findings inside are more exciting than theMoon cube, which is likely just a rock, but we will be checking the news either way. Even if there is nothing new or shocking, a 50-year-old Moon sample is too cool to ignore.
There is a video of a spaceship steering its engines.
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