![]() Beck Strauss, a planetary geophysicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, described hunting for faint magnetic fields in 3.1-billion-year-old rocks gathered by Apollo 12 astronauts. Some insights have come from looking at Apollo-era rocks in new ways. “The lunar crust is really a museum of planetary science,” said Juliane Gross, a planetary scientist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Moon rocks have helped scientists to pinpoint the dates of key events throughout the 4.5-billion-year history of the Solar System, such as the asteroid bombardment thought to have happened about half a billion years after Earth formed. Other nations are also racing to the Moon in January, a Chinese probe made a historic touchdown on the Moon's far side, and last month an Israeli company launched the first private Moon lander. Researchers should push to get as much science as possible out of those missions, for example by insisting that they go to mostly unexplored targets, such as the Moon’s far side, David Kring, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said at the meeting. The timing is serendipitous, because NASA plans to begin flying scientific instruments to the Moon’s surface as early as next year - its first venture there since 1972. ![]() Scientists are applying modern techniques to analyse the 382 kilograms of Moon rocks that astronauts retrieved between 19, and using insights from historical and modern Apollo studies to decide the next set of sites to explore on the lunar surface. Getting information from the decades-old core “is really a continuation of Apollo and a bridge to our future”, he said on 20 March at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.įresh studies of Apollo-era samples could help to shape the next generation of lunar geological discoveries, researchers said at the meeting. “One should consider this a new mission to the Moon,” says Chip Shearer, a geologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who plans to study the core using the latest laboratory techniques. It will be the first time in decades that anyone has opened a pristine Apollo sample. That’s when Apollo 17 astronauts pounded it into the ground in the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow Valley to collect rocks. Credit: NASAĪt some point in the coming year, curators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, will don protective suits and gloves, enter the high-tech laboratory that houses the United States’s trove of Moon rocks, and open a long metal tube that has been sealed since 1972. It has teamed up with electric vehicle specialist Venturi for batteries and materials able to withstand the harsh lunar environment and appears to be following the rapid, iterative development approach of companies such as SpaceX.NASA's Apollo 17 mission to the Moon collected rock samples that scientists hope to unseal for study in the coming year. With actual wheels rolling over the Californian desert sands, Astrolab appears quite some way along in terms of lunar rover development. The expectation is that the unenclosed rover will need to last at least 10 years and support multiple Artemis missions. "As we plan for long-term exploration of the Moon, the LTV won't be your grandfather's Moon Buggy used during the Apollo missions," said project manager Nathan Howard. ![]() ![]() It is approaching half a century since a lunar rover last turned its wheels on the Moon, and NASA is looking for something from commercial industry to support its Artemis program. Northrop Grumman throws hat in the ring to design NASA's next-gen Lunar Terrain Vehicle.China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon.Apollo 17 samples yield fresh insights 49 years after mission left the Moon.NASA awaits approval of $24bn 2022 budget."We anticipate astronauts being able to cover 60+km during a typical EVA, or extravehicular activity, at lower speeds this range will be extended considerably."
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