Strategic Investments in Instrumentation and Facilities for Extraterrestrial Sample Curation and Analysis (2019) / Chapter Skim
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2 Previous Sample Return Missions and Other Collections
2 Previous Sample Return Missions and Other Collections
Pages 8-19
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From page 8... ...
in honor of the late president and has been the heart of the crewed space flight program ever since. Six Apollo spacecraft plus 12 astronauts landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, each returning lunar samples to Earth (Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17; see Table 2.1 and Figure 2.1)
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1969 July 16 Apollo 11 Mare Tranquillitatis 21.6 July 24 1969 November 14 Apollo 12 Oceanus Procellarum 34.3 November 24 1971 January 31 Apollo 14 Fra Mauro 42.3 February 9 1971 July 26 Apollo 15 Hadley Rille 77.3 August 7 1972 April 16 Apollo 16 Descartes Highlands 95.7 April 27 1972 December 7 Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow 110.5 December 19 Luna Robotic Sample Return (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) 1970 September 12 Luna 16 Mare Fecunditatis 0.10 September 24 1972 February 14 Luna 20 Apollonius Highlands 0.05 February 25 1976 August 14 Luna 24 Mare Crisium 0.17 August 22 FIGURE 2.1 Lunar near-side map showing the locations of the landed missions during the Soviet and U.S.
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. 2.1.2 USSR -- Luna Between 1959 and 1976, the Soviet Union conducted 24 uncrewed Luna missions, including flybys, orbiters, landers, rovers, and sample return missions.
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Scientists assume the solar nebula was relatively homogeneous in its chemical and isotopic composition. In contrast, objects currently present in the solar system have a wide variation in composition."7 To study this evolution, NASA's first sample return since Apollo 17, the Genesis mission, was launched in August 2001 to collect solar wind samples from the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point8 and return them to Earth for study, in order to obtain a better understanding of the origin of the solar system (Figure 2.2)
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The Genesis curation team was able to recover solar wind samples from these pieces, and analyses by an instrument that was specially built for the mission (MegaSIMS) demonstrated the unexpected finding that terrestrial planets have a distinct oxygen isotopic composition from the solar nebula, as represented by the Sun.
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Flynn, D.R. Frank, et al., 2014, Interstellar dust: evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft, Science 345:786-791.
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dust.15 This finding requires that an effective means of transport existed between the inner and outermost solar system very early on, a process not previously imagined prior to this mission. Another surprise was the discovery that organic solids in Stardust samples are similar to those found in carbonaceous chondrites, interplanetary dust particles, and at least one Kuiper belt object.16 This is significant because it was previously assumed that organic solids associated with outer solar system bodies, such as comets, were formed from a different process than organic solids found within the inner solar system (e.g., in chondritic meteorites)
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The facility is on two floors, with the analytical equipment in the basement and the sample curation facilities on the first floor, taking up approximately 1,000 m2. The collection is catalogued online and is available for loan.19 The Astromaterials Science Research Group, established in 2015, is continuing the curatorial work for Hayabusa returned samples.
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The meteorite collection currently includes 19,596 different meteorites and 56,190 specimens. The Smithsonian also provides initial characterization of the newly collected specimens from the Antarctic Meteorite Program, followed by permanent storage and distribution to the scientific community.
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The associated Isotope Cosmochemistry and G eochronology Laboratory contains a wide range of analytical equipment such as a class 10,000 clean laboratory and a multi ollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (MC-ICP-MS) with laser ablation system c (see Appendix B)
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2.2.3 Analog Materials, Analytical Standards, and Witness Plates A number of ancillary materials are required in order to obtain accurate and precise data for returned samples. These include analog materials such as rocks, minerals, ices, gases, and organic compounds, both naturally occurring and manufactured, that play an important role in connection with the curation and subsequent study of extraterrestrial samples from sample return missions; analytical standards that are required to calibrate instruments and to assess accuracy of data; and witness plates, which are used to assess possible contamination experienced by the sample.
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Geological Survey, Smithsonian Institution, Geological Survey of Japan, Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry, and so on -- have generated analytical standards, and most are freely available upon request. A relatively comprehensive compilation of published standard values for trace elements and isotopes is available on the GeoReM website, which is maintained by a group at the Max-Planck Institute for Geochemistry in Mainz, Germany.24 2.2.3.3 Witness Plates Witness plates are used to document in space and time the environment in which extraterrestrial materials are sampled, stored, manipulated, and analyzed in terms of chemical, organic, or biological contamination.25 Witness plates fly on all current and planned extraterrestrial sample return missions, and these are curated at JSC for all NASA missions.
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