Fifty years ago, the Apollo 17 crew drove 12-inch tubes into the lunar soil to collect subsurface samples. The vacuum-sealed tubes were brought to Earth and placed in a protective container, also under vacuum, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Intact rocks and soil in two of these test tubes were stored with other selected samples, awaiting analysis by future scientists using more advanced instruments. The program is managed by the NASA ANGSA department.
Now, half a century later, NASA is in the process of opening up one of those Apollo 17 tubes – the ANGSA 73001 sample cache – to study the material inside with state-of-the-art equipment. But first, the researchers want to collect all the volatiles that might have been present in the once ultra-cold soil, materials that would immediately evaporate at room temperature.