Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Apollo 11 manned landing will begin returning scientific dividends as soon as Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin start to explore the lunar surface. Both are competent amateur geologists. They have had more than 120 hours of instruction from NASA geologists, and they have practiced collecting rock and soil samples in lunarlike terrain such as the Grand Canyon, California's Medicine Lake highlands, the Arizona meteorite crater, the arctic wastelands of Iceland, and Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Even their on-the-spot descriptions of the moon, to be transmitted instantaneously by radio to earth, should be of substantial value...
Beyond a doubt, however, the most important contribution of Apollo 11 to modern science will be the 100-odd lbs. of lunar rock and soil scheduled to be brought back by the astronauts. To safeguard this precious cargo, NASA has set up an elaborate system that stretches from the moon across space to Houston's $15.8 million Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) and to universities and laboratories all over the world. Says LRL Curator Elbert King: "Scientifically, this will be worth more than any other material in history...
...safety of their triple-sealed vacuum storage boxes, the lunar samples will be rushed to the LRL even before the Apollo 11 crew members arrive to wait out their 21-day quarantine period. There are "time-critical" tests that must be performed swiftly to detect any gas or radioactivity that the samples may give off; the emissions may decrease or stop soon after the sample is removed from the lunar surface. The samples will be sealed off from the rest of the world by a double biological barrier: 1) a vacuum system and a series of vacuum chambers in which...
...lunar specimens by radioactive dating methods. By determining the ratio of radioactive elements (say, rubidium and uranium) in a moon sample to the amounts of their products of decay (strontium and lead, respectively), scientists can make a good approximation of its age. Thus, because the Apollo 11 samples will be taken from the surface of the Sea of Tranquillity, researchers may well be able to estimate the age of the moon's maria, or seas. This, in turn, might settle a longstanding controversy among selenologists: Were the maria formed as recently as 100 million years ago, or have they existed...
Some scientists are hoping that unexpected clues in Apollo's samples will lead to new and more satisfying theories about the moon's origin. Complains Astrophysicist Ralph Baldwin: "There is no existing theory that gives a satisfactory explanation of the earth-moon system as we know it." Nobel Laureate Chemist Harold Urey wryly notes that it would be easier to prove that the moon did not exist than to get agreement on how it came...