Warwickshire News Mine

Thanks to the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and NASA, from 29 July- 2 September the museum at Market Place in Warwick will have on display six samples of lunar rock and soil from the Apollo space missions.

Although the samples are small, they are priceless. They have travelled a quarter of a million miles to Earth and are around 4 billion years old.

Dr Jon Radley, Keeper of Geology for Warwickshire County Council’s Museum Service, helped to set up the loan of moon rock to Warwickshire.  He said: ”This is an amazing coup. I grew up with, and have been fascinated by, the Apollo programme. To watch the film footage where the astronauts gathered the materials and to then see them for myself is a dream come true.”

The specimens were collected during the manned space missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s and include the famous ‘orange soil’, originally thought to be evidence of water on the Moon (Mare Serenitatis ‘Sea of Serenity’, Apollo 17).  For Dr Jon Radley, the Apollo 17 material is particularly special as this was the only mission to land a geologist on the moon - Dr Harrison Schmidt.

Dr Radley added: “Rocks of a similar age do occur in a few places on Earth, but are incredibly deformed and hard to interpret. In contrast the lunar rocks are in near-pristine condition - almost as fresh as the day they formed. They are the most priceless geological specimens ever to be collected.”

During the Apollo missions, astronauts brought back to Earth 382 kilograms of lunar material. Most of this material is used by scientists to study the Moon, but NASA decided to use a small proportion of the rock and soil to develop lunar and planetary sciences educational packages. STFC is the UK’s only authorised source for the loan of rare samples of moon rock and lunar dust on behalf of NASA. They received the application for the rock from Warwickshire Museum Service and, once the necessary security checks had been made, they were delighted to offer a six-week loan of the specimens.

The samples, which have been encapsulated by NASA, will consist of:
* Lava sample from Mare Imbrium, Apollo 15.
* Highland soil, Mare Imbrium, Apollo 15.
* Fragmented rock, Mare Imbrium, Apollo 15.
* Highland rock, Descartes Highlands, Apollo 16.
* The famous ‘orange soil’, originally thought to be evidence of water on the moon, * Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), Apollo 17.
* Volcanic soil, Taurus-Littrow Valley, Apollo 17.

Link to WCC