The Best Gift of All: A Box of Moon Soil

  • Released Monday, December 23, 2019
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Jamie Elsila and Danielle Simkus prepare previously unopened Apollo 17 Moon samples for analysis.

Music is "Fairy Christmas" from Universal Production Music.

Astrochemist Jamie Elsila, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, unwraps pristine Moon soil. Apollo 17 astronauts collected it in 1972 by driving tubes down to 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) below the Moon’s surface and pulling out soil that they vacuum-sealed inside the tube right on the Moon. That tube has never been opened … until recently.

In this video, Elsila and her colleague, NASA Goddard planetary scientists Danielle Simkus, are preparing two grams of Moon soil, which is called regolith, for analysis in their lab, the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at Goddard. Besides Moon soil, the scientists are also preparing lab-made Earth soil that will serve as a control in their experiments, helping increase the reliability of the results.

The soils are first crushed with a mortar and pestle and transferred to glass capsules. Then, scientists add water, flame-seal the capsules, and cook them in a special oven to extract organic compounds. Over the next few months, they will study the extracted compounds to shed light on the primordial chemistry of the solar system.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Monday, December 23, 2019.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:45 PM EDT.