NASA is just now opening a vacuum-sealed sample it took from the moon 50 years ago

During the Apollo 17 mission, Harrison Schmitt is seen in the lunar Roving Vehicle. A lunar soil sample has been kept out of the public eye.

Eugene A. Cernan - NASA/AFP via Getty Images

Fifty years ago, astronauts on one of NASA's Apollo missions hammered a pair of tubes into the moon. After the tubes were filled with rocks and soil, the astronauts vacuum sealed one of the tubes and put the other in a normal container. They were brought back to Earth.

The first tube of the Apollo 17 lunar module has been tightly sealed since 1972, the last time humans set foot on the moon.

Why is it so long? To take advantage of the technology of the future.

The agency knew science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways.

The tube from that mission was opened in 2019. The sample offered insight into the subject of landslides in airless places, because the layers of lunar soil had been preserved.

The Apollo 17 lunar sample is being worked on by scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Robert Markowitz/NASA-Johnson Space Center

The sample being opened has been sealed and may contain gas. Water ice and carbon dioxide could be contained in the tube. The materials at the bottom of the tube were very cold.

The amount of these gases in the sample is expected to be very low, so scientists are using a special device to extract and collect the gas.

The European Space Agency developed a tool to pierce the sample and capture the gases as they escape. Scientists there call that tool Apollo can opener.

The seal on the inner sample tube seems to be intact so far, as the process of opening and capturing has begun. The can opener is ready to trap gases when the piercing process is done.

Scientists can use mass spectrometry to identify gases in a sample. The gas could be used for other research.

As the sample is opened, new tools were developed to trap gases.

James Blair/NASA

Each gas component that is analyzed can help to tell a different part of the story about the origin and evolution of volatiles on the Moon and within the early Solar System.

The project stirred excitement 10 years after it was proposed, according to the Apollo sample curator at NASA. There are unique equipment to make it possible with these two new tools.

NASA will send humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years with the help of the analysis of these samples. The plan for Artemis is to bring a woman and a person of color to the moon for the first time.