A rare glimpse of NASA’s otherworldly treasures

Author: Admin
Posted on: January 5, 2013
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HOUSTON, Tex.—Building 31 on the campus of Johnson Space Center lacks the Tower of London’s majesty and history. No Queen’s Guard stand outside. But this drab, 1960s-era building is nonetheless where NASA keeps the crown jewels of its exploration program. Inside various clean rooms, curators watch over meteorites from Mars and the asteroid belt, cosmic dust, samples of the solar wind, comet particles, and, of course, hundreds of kilograms of Moon rocks.

In late December, Ars spent a day visiting these collections, including the rarely accessed Genesis Lab. While our request for a Moon rock keepsake was sadly rebuffed, we nonetheless got a VIP tour of every astromaterial NASA has collected from other bodies in the Solar System and beyond. With Senior Space Editor Eric Berger providing the words and Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson capturing the photos, we can now offer an unprecedented look at how NASA protects its rarest and most valuable off-world samples.

Antarctic meteorites

To start, we wanted to see the famous Mars rock.

Before entering NASA’s meteorite lab, we had patiently removed our wedding rings and then donned booties, a surgeon’s cap, and a white gown. From the changing room, we moved into a small chamber for an air shower to remove loose particles from ourselves—it felt a bit like one of those hurricane “simulators” at an amusement park. Finally, we walked into a brightly lit, sterile room where NASA keeps asteroids that scientists collect in Antarctica.

The collection houses about 20,000 rocks, but the most famous of those rocks is ALH84001. Sometime around 16 million years ago, a large meteorite or asteroid 0.5 to 1 km across or larger struck the Martian surface and blasted some rocks into space at a speed greater than the red planet’s escape velocity. One of them flew through space until about 13,000 years ago when it crashed into Antarctica. A team of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation found it during the winter of 1984, although they didn’t know it had come from Mars at the time.

Americans weren’t the first people to realize that Antarctica was the best place in the world to find meteorites. Japanese researchers had been traveling there to collect them since the 1960s. When University of Pittsburgh geologist William Cassidy learned of their successful discovery of all kinds of meteorites in 1973, he convinced the National Science Foundation to fund US expeditions. By 1976, Americans were joining the Japanese scientists in the field; the NASA lab was created two years later to house the samples.

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