Word: lunar
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Elaborate safeguards have been set up to protect the lunar samples from contamination. Should earthly gases and organisms invade the moon rocks before they are thoroughly analyzed, investigators would find it difficult to distinguish between the lunar and terrestrial origins of their samples...
...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 samples will remain under quarantine in the LRL for 45 to 50 days, while 200 NASA scientists and technicians photograph, weigh, catalogue, chip and even burn them. Particles of the samples will be tested on living cells, including those taken from fish and from a human cancer. Other particles will be fed to a variety of earth life, such as Japanese quail, algae, sunflowers, pine seedlings, oysters, white mice and cockroaches?the last chosen because they are one of the hardiest insects known to man, having survived as a distinct genus for millions of years. All the organisms involved...
...organisms remain healthy and no other evidence of lunar bugs develops by the end of the quarantine period, samples of lunar rocks will be sent to 142 "principal investigators" at outside universities and laboratories, chiefly in the U.S. "Some of these men have been waiting for such a chance for 40 years," says LRL Director Persa Bell...
Several groups of the eager investigators have been assigned the job of measuring the age of the 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...