[meteorite-list] LOTS OF MOON ROCKS GONE?

From: Randy Korotev <korotev_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:13:42 -0600
Message-ID: <201112122009.pBCK9SS29381_at_levee.wustl.edu>

I'd like to address this issue of missing Apollo samples as a researcher.

I just checked my inventory. I have 999 (really!) line items of
samples from the 6 Apollo and 3 Russian Luna landing sites from
NASA. I can think of only 1 or 2 other researchers who might have
more. The total mass is 320.064 g (0.08% of the collection). That's
an average of 0.32 g/sample. But, even that number is
misleading. The mass distribution looks like this.

http://meteorites.wustl.edu/Korotev_NASA_Apollo_&_Luna_samples.jpg

Only 49 of the samples exceed 1 gram is mass. All of the samples >3
g are not "rocks" but regolith (alias soil or dust) samples. The
smallest samples are all thin sections.

My point is that every article about this issue shows a photo of a
big rock, and NASA just doesn't issue big rocks to us
researchers. As someone else mentioned, I suspect the actual mass of
missing material is not large.

Randy Korotev
Received on Mon 12 Dec 2011 03:13:42 PM PST