Where does NASA keep the Moon Rocks? - Smarter Every Day 220

It is then triple packaged. These bags are then successively removed as the tools get closer and closer to the

moon

rocks

to avoid contamination at each step. For example, here you can see me putting on a second pair of gloves just to touch the second bag, before placing this snack container in the airlock. So am I going to upload this? What flow do you want? - Just go to 100, 100 is fine. Then you're going to purge for five minutes. - Five minute purge? -UH Huh. - And that's purging the airlock, which is

where

I put the tools.

Exactly. And you're going to reach in and get the tools, or she's going to do that. - You're going to do it when you come in, you're going to close the airlock, the flow, Okay, and then you're going to reach in and put the tool in. - What are these I'm looking at? - Data packets, which is the story of

every

,

every

, this is what NASA tells us to do. We get curatorial orders that tell you exactly what to do and this was done in 1985, well now of course they are, and the first thing I told you we had to do was weigh the rock to make sure it was within tolerance.

So I did this in 1985. - Really? You're not that old. - I know, someone faked this. (laughing) Who did that? (laughs) And this is the first thing you do. - Okay... You take a photo of the rock from any side, this is the underside. Then you walk to the other side and take the top face. That's

where

you want the saw to go, and it will come out right there. - What type of saw do you use? - Band saw, is the old (indistinct) meat slicer that was modified to have a diamond-edged blade so that no oil or lubricants were used, because that would contaminate the surface of the sample.

We'll show you, it's right in the other room, so. - Great, so you saw it? - Yes, and as you saw, every time a piece breaks you have to stop and take a photo. Now 15459.0 is the parent. Point zero is the father of every rock, but every time a piece breaks, you take a picture and assign a number to it. - Wow. - Because as you go by, do you see how those pieces are breaking? - Ah, right here, so you have the pieces. - A lot of pieces are breaking. You have to put it back together. - Oh my God. - Like a puzzle. - And then you also have to calculate the... - You have to know each number. - Actually? - Absolutely.

Because look, if you got this little white piece of that number 254 years ago and now you want to do studies of the same piece and someone has used it, you can come and find the other part that's at 252 right there. the same mineral. - Good grace. - Then you have to know where each sample came from. We know that if a rock has broken into 2,000 pieces, literally by looking at the pictures, you can tell exactly how to put it back together and know where all the pieces came from. - Take a second to think about how complex this problem is.

Every angle is photographed, some parts even down to the microscopic level, so you can put the whole rock back together with nothing more than photographs and paperwork. One thing you'll see in most of these

moon

rock photos are these little cubes on the side that I like to call letter dice. - The cube, north southeast west up down, do you see the cubes right there? The astronauts took photographs of the sample on the moon and gave them orientation and we maintain that orientation. If we break up and flip the rock, we flip the cube so we know exactly where the sample was placed relative to the location on the moon, and I'll show you a picture of that in a few minutes. - It would never have occurred to me to think how important it was. the detail? - It's very important because you want to know if it was exposed to cosmic rays, solar wind, whatever.

What was the depth? Was he sitting on the surface of the moon? Was it buried under something? All of that is important in the research that the PIs are doing. - These are not letter dice, which, if you say letter dice, people will make fun of you, right? - They are orientation cubes. - Orientation cubes? - Yes, I'm glad to know it now. - Well, what do we have, what are the letters? - So, you know, north, south, east and west and then up and down. - I got you, okay, letter dice. (laughs) You've forgotten more about the moon than most people will ever know, haven't you? - (laughs) and I forgot... - (laughs) That's incredible. - And this is a soil sample from Apollo 11. - Really? - You can hold this. - Can I hold it?

I would love to hold that. - It is a sample from Apollo 11, what is the number? - 10071-- - Comma. - Comma 11, but wait, you said it's broken. - Yeah, this is point 11, so there's point 12, there's point 15, there's point 100, but this is once you get this number point 11-- - So there was a sample and you just pulled some out and those those are those. Yes, together they are the sample. - Exactly. - That is incredible. - This is a returned sample, so it actually went outside, because they did their studies and analysis, it could have been in one piece when they received it and now it came back broken into these pieces.

But they still have to return the sample. -Andrea let me hold it. - They still have to do it. (laughs) - It's in a bag, I don't care, I have to hold it. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thanks for all your time ladies, it was amazing. I'm aware of. So, it's Destin, you're getting

smarter

every day, have fun. It was amazing. Many thanks to the Johnson Space Center for allowing me to enter the facility where they store the moon

rocks

. I'm very grateful, thanks Gordon, thanks Andrea, it's a great deal. Also thanks to the US Space and Rocket Center for allowing me to film on the moon.

There are two things you can do if you want, number one is you can subscribe to Smarter Every Day, if you want, if you like this kind of thing. Number two is to consider watching one of these videos from our friends. One is Joe Hanson from "It's Okay to Be Smart," he talks about what we really learn from these rocks. And the other one is Brady Haran, my friend, he has a channel called "Objectvity", he teaches specifically about genesis rock, which is really great rock that taught us a lot of things. I'm Destin, you're getting

smarter

every day, fare well, now I'll slow down my footage. (bleep) (laughs) Does that work? (laugh)