astronaut standing upon the lunar surface with the United States flag in the background.
Harrison H. Schmitt collects lunar rake samples at Station 1 during the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. Schmitt is the lunar module pilot. The Lunar Rake, an Apollo Lunar Geology Hand Tool, is used to collect discrete samples of rocks and rock chips.
onboard photo, Lunar Module pilot Harrison H. Schmitt collects rock samples from a huge boulder near the Valley of Taurus-Littrow on the lunar surface.
Apollo 17 space vehicle is launched from Pad A., Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, at 12:33 a.m. (EST), Dec. 7, 1972. Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission in NASA's Apollo program, was the first nighttime liftoff of the Saturn V launch vehicle.
As part of NASA’s Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis program, the UNM-led research team named the Consortium for the Advanced Analysis of Apollo Samples (CAAAS) and directed by Dr. Charles Shearer, a research scientist at UNM’s Institute of Meteoritics and a research professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, will systematically examine the double drive tube core collected by Schmitt and Cernan from a landslide deposit during their exploration of the Taurus-Littrow Valley in December 1972. This core along with the other samples collected during the Apollo Program represents the “crown jewels” of the United States and its space exploration program.
This core was stored in a core sample vacuum container (CSVC) that was sealed on the lunar surface and has never been examined. The team will examine the “water,” gas, and volatile element record preserved in these specially preserved samples, the effectiveness of the sample container in keeping these samples uncorrupted, and potential container improvements. The core has been carefully stored at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, since December 1972.
Fifty years ago, with great foresight, Apollo mission planners devised special sample containment systems that were designed to preserve fragile sample characteristics that could be contaminated and destroyed by interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. Many of these “special” samples remain to this day sealed in their original Apollo containers for eventual study by future generations of space scientists.
“There are two unique feature of these double drive tube core samples.” said Shearer. “The samples were sealed on the surface of the Moon and may have preserved many characteristics of the lunar soil that could have been destroyed once returned to Earth. The other unique characteristic of this sample is that it's the only core sample that the astronauts collected that penetrated a landslide deposit."
Shearer, who has studied lunar and other extraterrestrial samples for over 30 years, will lead an international science and engineering team including: Apollo 17 Astronaut and New Mexico resident Harrison Schmitt; European Space Agency; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; NASA’s Johnson Space Center; Open University, UK; University of California, Riverside; University of Hawaii; University of Manchester, UK; University of Maryland; University of Notre Dame; University of Purdue; University of Virginia and the Washington University St. Louis.
