[meteorite-list] Apollo Moon Rook On Display at Cumberland Science Museum in Tennessee

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:50:27 2004
Message-ID: <200204151542.IAA21020_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/02/04/16235660.shtml?Element_ID=16235660

Rock from moon lands at Cumberland Science Museum
By NICOLE GARTON
Tennessean.com
April 15, 2002

More than 3 billion years ago, molten lava bubbled toward the surface of the
moon.

As it reached the air, it hardened into a hole-riddled piece of basalt.

There it lay, in a lunar crater called Mare Ibrium, until 31 years ago, when
astronaut James Irwin crunched across the surface of the moon and used a pair of
tongs to pick up the 6-pound rock. He dropped it into a tagged plastic bag and
stashed it in a box aboard the Apollo 15 spacecraft for the journey back to Earth.

Beginning Saturday, a fragment of that rock will land in a display at Cumberland
Science Museum, where visitors can take a peek at the first real moon rock
Nashville has exhibited in more than 15 years. It's on loan from Johnson Space
Center in Houston.

Kris McCall, director of the Sudekum Planetarium at the museum, hopes the
fist-sized black rock will help get people excited about the moon.

''A lot of people overlook the moon, except that it's big and bright in the
sky and that keeps them from seeing other stars,'' McCall said.
''But the moon is Earth's nearest neighbor in space.''

With all the buzz about searching for life on Mars, the moon seems like old
news.

Back in the 1960s, the United States raced to be the first country to reach the
moon. Everybody was excited about what astronauts would find.

Between 1969 and 1972, NASA astronauts made six flights to the moon and
brought back 842 pounds of rock, sand and dust. Scientists study these samples
to learn about how the solar system was formed.

Some things they've learned:

* The youngest moon rocks are about as old as the oldest Earth rocks. Because
Earth is still geologically active, its surface is constantly being ''repaved.'' The
moon's surface stayed the same until humans arrived and left their footprints in
the soil.

* There is no life on the moon.

* When the moon was young, its surface melted and became a vast ocean of
magma, or liquid rock, dozens of miles deep.

Still, scientists haven't unlocked all of the moon's secrets, says NASA
geophysicist Paul Lowman, who has studied rocks brought back by the Apollo
missions. He'd like to see astronauts return to the moon to set up telescopes for
studying the rest of the universe.

''The moon is the best place in the solar system for astronomy,'' he said, adding
that the sky is always dark and there's no atmosphere to distort the telescopic
images - ideal conditions for studying the stars.

As for the rocks, geologists continue to learn new things from them every year.

California astronomer Phil Plait doesn't just call them rocks. He calls them proof.

There are some people who claim the moon landings were a hoax.

They say NASA faked all of its moon photos and used a movie set and special
effects to create the news broadcasts showing men walking on the moon.

But Plait, who will speak about the moon at Cumberland Science Museum this
weekend, says the rocks brought back by astronauts are so different from
anything found on Earth that they couldn't possibly be phony.

For starters, the moon rocks have an element in them called helium-3.

''It's a slightly different flavor of the helium you're used to,'' he explained. ''It's
extremely rare on Earth but very common in solar wind, which is constantly
enveloping the moon.''

Another telling detail in the rocks, Plait said, are miniature craters caused by
particles of dust called micrometeorites that travel at several thousand miles per
second. On Earth, the atmosphere stops these particles from hitting the surface,
but on the moon, where there's no air, the surface gets pinged by them, causing
tiny ''zap pits'' in the rocks.

Another thing to look at is the color.

''There are no red or brown colors in that moon rock,'' Lowman said.
''Everything is gray or black or white. It's like a black-and-white photograph.''

That's because there's no air or water on the moon. On Earth, iron in the soil
that is exposed to water turns red or brown the same way a nail gets rusty. It's
called oxidization, and it doesn't happen on the moon.

But don't take their word for it. You can study the moon rock yourself.
Received on Mon 15 Apr 2002 11:42:09 AM PDT