Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
the collectors' market. Every milligram had to be accounted for. Dave looked tired and
nervous; he had been away for a long time, he was under constant scrutiny, and he still had
a job to do.
When the subject of lunar samples comes up, most people immediately think of Moon
rocks, perhaps something chunky that you can hold in your hand. But a significant portion
of the Apollo material was lunar soil, or regolith. The finest-grained fraction of regolith
is pulverized rock in fragments so small that you can't resolve them in a microscope—the
consequence of a battery of cosmic insults, from mighty asteroids to the incessant solar
wind. This ultrapowder has strange properties, most notably that it sticks to everything it
touches,likeXeroxtoner.Dave'staskwastotransfersomeofthispowderfromavialabout
the size of a C battery into three or four smaller vials, about the size of AAA batteries, for
distribution to nearby laboratories.
It sounds easy. Dump the powder from the big vial onto a three-inch-square piece of
glassy-surfacedpowderpaper.Gentlyscoopsmallamountsintothesmallervials.Davehad
performed similar operations hundreds of times, and it shouldn't have taken more than a
minute. But the stakes were higher here. Humorless guards were standing to either side; a
small cohort of students was hovering, too. So Dave's hand shook a bit as he tipped the big
vial. The sticky powder clung to the glass sides and didn't want to come out. He tapped it
with his index finger. Nothing. Tapped again.
Then all of a sudden all the Moon dust—really only a little pile the size of a Hershey
kiss,butitseemedlikealotunderthecircumstances—came shlumpingoutallatonce,and
then poof! Dust flew up, coated Dave's fingers, and spilled over the edge of the powder
paper onto the table. We all must have breathed in some of the finest airborne particles. No
one said a word.
It wasn't a real disaster, as almost nothing was lost, and the powder did eventually get
transferred, and the feds did eventually leave to hand off the aliquots to other labs. In ret-
rospect, we all thought it was pretty funny. And in a couple of days, above the lab bench
where the transfer had been completed, we neatly framed that three-inch square of powder
paper with a near-perfect imprint of Dave Wones's left index finger in Moon dust.
FourmoreApolloMoonlandingsfollowed,culminatinginDecember1972withApollo17
and the return of more than 240 pounds of samples from the Taurus-Littrow Valley, a re-
gion of suspected lunar volcanism. That was the last mission; no one has gone back in four
decades. Nevertheless, the Moon rocks, meticulously curated in sterile vaults at the Lunar
Sample Building at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston (with a secure backup col-
lection at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas), continue to provide an amazing
wealth of opportunities for researchers.
