Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Even so, it would be hard to overstate the impact of the Apollo missions and their treas-
ure trove of Moon rocks on my generation of Earth scientists. For all of human history,
the Moon was tantalizingly close, just under a quarter-million miles away. On a clear sum-
mer's evening, as the reddened full Moon rises, you feel as if you could just reach out and
touch it. But we had no samples—nothing to tell us for sure of what the Moon was made,
nor when, nor where. With the first batch of lunar samples, we could, for the first time in
human history, literally touch the Moon (as can any visitor to the Smithsonian today).
My literal first breath of lunar samples came in the winter of 1969-70, during my senior
year at MIT, less than half a year after Apollo 11's historic mission. The stage had been
set a few months earlier, on July 24, 1969, when the first humans to walk on the Moon
returned to Earth. In those early days of lunar exploration, concerns of contamination by
alien microbes dictated strict quarantine policies for astronauts and their samples. So as
soonastheirmodulesplasheddowninthePacificnearHawaii,assoonasNeilArmstrong,
Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins were retrieved by the USS
Hornet,
they and the forty-five
priceless pounds of rocks and soil they had brought home from space were hermetically
sealed in NASA's Mobile Quarantine Facility. From Hawaii, they were all shipped to Hou-
ston, to the new Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where the space explorers and their precious
samples were confined for almost three weeks, in case something really nasty had accom-
panied them back to Earth.
Apollo missions followed fast upon one another in the next three years. The Apollo 12
lunar module
Intrepid,
with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr., and Alan Bean, touched down
on November 19, 1969, and a week later returned with about seventy pounds of Moon
rocksandsoil,whichwerewhiskedintotheHoustonquarantinefacilities.Bygoodfortune,
my thesis adviser, the brilliant and ebullient David Wones, was a member of the Apollo 12
Lunar Sample Preliminary Investigation Team. That small band of scientists had the glori-
ous adventure of scrutinizing the second precious lunar sample haul with a state-of-the-art
arsenal of analytical machines. Dave's expertise was igneous petrology—the study of the
origin of rocks that form from magma. All of the Apollo 11 and 12 Moon rocks were ig-
neous in origin, so he was in geologist heaven.
In some ways, it was hard duty, being locked up for the better part of a month with a
few other intense scientists, under pressure to gather unassailable data on some of the most
costly and significant rock samples ever collected. But it was also incredibly exciting to be
amongthefirsthumanstohandlerocksandsoilfromanotherworld—thespacematter that
would once and for all tell us the origin of the Moon.
My first glimpse of the Moon up close came on Dave's return to MIT. I recall the elev-
ator door opening on the twelfth floor of the Green Building. There was Dave, of modest
stature and bespectacled, flanked by two beefy, uniformed, gun-toting federal agents. They
were guarding the Moon samples, which at that point would have been worth millions on
