NASA announced the opening of a capsule with lunar soil, which was collected during the Apollo 17 mission more than 50 years ago. The autopsy was performed at the Astromaterials Research Division (ARES) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The capsule is being studied as part of the ANGSA program, which decided to preserve regolith samples from the Apollo mission until such time as improved scientific and technological methods are available to study them.
Sample 73001 was sealed in a vacuum capsule on the Moon and then stored in a second protective outer vacuum tube inside nitrogen-flushed processing cabinets at the Johnson Lunar Laboratory. As early as December 1972, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt collected regolith by plunging thin, cylindrical sample-collecting devices into landslide deposits in the Taurus Valley and Littrow on the Moon.
This sample 73001 is the lower part of the double drive tube. The upper drive tube, sample 73002, was returned from the Moon in a conventional unsealed container that was opened in 2019.
Before the ARES team extruded the 73001 drive tube, extensive scans were performed at the University of Texas at Austin using X-ray computed tomography technology to obtain high-resolution 3D images of the sample composition within it.
Researchers are constantly recording what the material inside the tube looked like before it was removed. According to them, the container was overfilled, and this caused minor problems with the extraction of regolith.
Last month, the team worked on trapping any gas present in the outer containment tube and then punctured the inner container and extracted any remaining lunar gases inside.
After that, the researchers conducted trial runs of the extrusion process with a mock-up core in Johnson's lab. They compared the process to assembling furniture, except that the researchers' hand movements are limited by heavy gloves inside the sample box.
As part of the Artemis mission, astronauts will travel beyond the equator to the South Pole, and researchers believe it is important to study lunar samples now, as this will give an idea of the volatile substances on the Moon, which could potentially be a lot at the South Pole. These are substances that evaporate at normal temperatures, like water ice and carbon dioxide.
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