A score of test tubes with samples of lunar dust brought from the terrestrial satellite on the Apollo 11 spacecraft have been found in an old warehouse in California, United States, after 43 years unaccounted for.
Specifically, it was Karen Nelson, an archivist, who found the vacuum-sealed containers in a warehouse at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA), labeled and dated July 24, 1970. Apparently, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin collected moondust Ythe American aerospace agency NASA gave about 68 grams to the Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Melvin Calvin, of the University of Berkeley, for your study. As published by the magazineNew Scientist, Calvin passed out several samples among his colleagues to analyze their carbon compounds, then collected them to return, but there were only 50 grams left.
NASA inferred that the difference had been destroyed during the analysis process, but about three grams of the valuable material was stored in the test tubes that Nelson discovered a month ago. Along with the packaging, Nelson found an article published in 1971 inProceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference, with the title of “Study of carbon compounds in the lunar samples of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12”. NASA rules out an alleged robbery or malicious action, and attributes the loss to some forgetfulness of Calvin.
After an analysis of the samples at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, it has been determined that they may still be useful for research.
Thesalvaged moondust comes from a relatively rare type of rock, called a gap, which has other minerals apart from basalt, the most common in the area where Apollo 11 landed.
