Frozen soil samples from the moon began to be studied after 50 years

This research is part of the Apollo Sample Analysis Program, or ANGSA. But the process of transferring samples from the Moon to

exploring them was not easy.It began more than four years ago when NASA's Julie Mitchell and her Artemis curation team at Johnson began designing and redesigning a facility to process frozen samples from the Apollo 17 mission. This was a new approach that scientists wanted to use for samples from future lunar missions.

Once the setup was done, to Ryan Ziegler,the Apollo Sample Curator and his team had to familiarize themselves with the new sample handling conditions in order to preserve them during processing. It is important to keep the samples frozen in order to compare them with other possible ice samples from the Moon.

After the frozen samples have been processed andseparated, they were rushed to the Goddard Center. Jamie Elsila, a researcher at the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at the Goddard Center, is currently studying small volatile organic compounds for sample analysis. Previous research has shown that some lunar samples contain amino acids that were essential for the formation of life on Earth. Elsil's team wants to understand their origin and how common they are in the solar system.

Natalie Curran, principal investigator at Goddard's Noble Gas Laboratory, is examining the samples to understand what formation they were part of on the Moon.

Scientists will analyze both sets of samples to determinefind out whether there are differences in organic content among them. This will help determine in what conditions they will be stored further, as well as what to do with future samples that will be delivered to Earth.

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