Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Moon Rocks

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

From 1969 through 1972 six Apollo missions landed on the moon and returned a total of 840 pounds of moon rocks to the Earth. Geologists were able to study them and learned an enormous amount about the composition and formation of the moon. However, those same rocks have been the center of several controversies and mysteries ever since they came back to Earth. Learn more about moon rocks and where they are now on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1969 through 1972, six Apollo missions landed on the moon and returned a total of 840 pounds of moon rocks to the earth. Geologists were able to study them and learned an enormous amount about the composition and formation of the moon. However, those same rocks have been the center of several controversies and mysteries ever since they came back. Learn more about moon rocks, and where they are now, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens.

Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing.

You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. So let's start this episode with the basics. What is a moon rock? A moon rock is a rock that comes from the moon. While that's pretty obviously a totology, for the purpose of this episode, I'm only going to focus on moon rocks,

which have been brought back to the Earth. There aren't very many moon rocks on Earth. In fact, they're one of the rarest substances on the planet. There are only four sources of moon rocks. The first source is meteorites that have landed on Earth that were ejected from the moon. It's possible to tell the origin of meteorites by their chemical composition. As of today, only 370 meteorite pieces have been identified as having come from the moon, and those only came from 30 sources.

None of them were found after an observed meteor falling from space. The total mass of all the moon meteorites found on Earth is around 190 kilograms or 420 pounds. The other sources all come from human activity. The Chinese Changi 5 mission returned 1.7 kilograms or 61 ounces of moon rock to the earth in 2020. The Soviet Union sent several unmanned probes to the moon during their Luna program. Three of them managed to successfully return samples of moon rock back to the earth. Luna 16 in 1970 returned 101 grams. Luna 20 in 1972 returned 55 grams, and Luna 24 in 1976 sent back 170 grams of moon rock.

The total amount brought back by the Soviets was less than a third of a kilogram. The largest amount of moon rock on Earth today by far came from the Apollo program, and it's these rocks that I'll be focusing on for the rest of the episode. The Apollo astronauts took samples from several different locations near their landing sites. Some of the later missions were actually able to travel several miles in a moon buggy to collect samples further away. The total amount of moon rock brought back to the Earth by all six Apollo missions with 381 kilograms. While there are some chemical similarities between the Earth and the moon, the geology of the Moon is very different. The Moon is much smaller, so when it formed it cooled

quicker. There's no atmosphere on the Moon, so there's no weathering. On Earth there are three types of rock, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. On the Moon, there's basically just one type, igneous. These rocks were created when the Moon was formed. Many of these rocks on the surface have been pulverized by billions of years of meteors, micrometeers, cosmic rays, and solar wind. Back when I was studying geology, I actually had a professor who worked on analyzing some of the moon rocks when he was in the graduate program at Harvard in the early 70s. It was actually exciting stuff to be able to work on such a brand new branch of geology. This episode really isn't about the geochemistry of the moon, however. It is about the rocks themselves, not the science

behind them. The vast majority of the moon rocks return to Earth by the Apollo mission are located in the lunar sample laboratory facility located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There's another smaller collection of rocks at the White Sands Test facility in New Mexico. In both facilities, the rocks are stored in nitrogen gas so they don't chemically react with anything, and they're almost never physically touched by humans. There's also a small number of samples that are sent to researchers around the world who apply for access to the rocks. All of the moon rocks collected by the Apollo missions are the property of the United States government,

and they are meticulously tracked. However, there are some exceptions. These are the rocks that are not used for scientific inquiry. These are called Goodwill Moon Rocks. After the Apollo 11 landing and the return of the very first moon rocks, the United States government gave very small samples to all 50 states, 135 countries, and the United Nations. This even included countries that the United States was at odds with at the time,

such as the Soviet Union. The samples were really small. Each country was given about the equivalent of a couple grains of rights. The samples were mounted on an acrylic button, placed on a wooden stand with a small flag from the state or country, which was also taken to the moon. The Apollo 11 rocks were not the only ones given away as gifts. There were also samples given away from the very last Apollo mission, Apollo 17. Astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt had collected more moon rocks than any other mission, and Schmidt was an actual geologist and was the first and only scientist ever to land on the moon.

The very last rock that they picked up, the last moon rock collected in the entire Apollo project, program was a three kilogram sample of basalt. While they were picking it up, there were a group of children from many different countries listening to the mission live at mission control in Houston. Sernan gave a short speech about how they wished for this rock to inspire the children of the world and how they also wished for this rock to be broken up and given to all the nations of the earth. The rock was cataloged as Lunar Basalt 70017, but it became known as the Children of the World Rock or the Goodwill Rock. When the Children of the World Rock was born, brought back to Earth. It was broken up and given out as a goodwill gift in 1973 to all of the

previous recipients of the Apollo 11 rocks. The sample of the Apollo 17 rock was significantly larger than the samples from the Apollo 11 mission. The acrylic ball that the rock was encased in was about the size of a golf ball. A few more Apollo 17 rocks were given out to other countries that gained their independence after 1973. A total of 270 moon rocks were given to other countries. 105 were given to U.S. states and territories, and two were given to the United Nations. Once the goodwill moon rocks were given out, they were soon forgotten. Now, here's an interesting question. What is the value of a moon rock? How much would one be worth? According to NASA, they are officially invaluable. There is no price placed upon them because they are never for sale because they're illegal to sell.

However, we can certainly put a price tag on it. If you calculate the cost required to collect the moon rocks, basically the entire cost of the Apollo program, which was $257 billion inflation-adjusted dollars, and divide that by the weight of all the moon rocks which were brought back, 381,000 grams, you end up with a value of about $674,000 per gram of Moonrock. To put that into perspective, the value of gold at the time I'm recording this is $56.97 a gram. That means that Moon Rocks are one of the rarests. and most valuable substances on Earth. In 1993, Sotheby's held an auction of Soviet space memorabilia.

One of the items up for auction was a few tiny flakes of moon rocks weighing only two-tenths of a gram, and it sold for $442,500. It later sold for almost twice that much in 2018. It should then come as no surprise that once those goodwill moon rocks were given out, many of them just disappeared. Rumors began circulating that moonrocks were being sold on the black market. Enter into this pitcher Joseph Gute Heinz. He was an attorney for NASA, and in 1998 he and other federal officials launched a sting operation to catch people selling fake moon rocks.

They put on an ad in USA Today, and the con men started reaching out to sell them their fake rocks. However, one person who responded to the ad claimed to have a real moon rock, and he knew a lot about it, and his asking price was $5 million. It turned out to be the Goodwill Moon Rock. rock which was given to the nation of Honduras. Rumors had it that the goodwill rock given to Nicaragua was sold for $10 million to an anonymous buyer from the Middle East. The rock for sale was purchased from a Honduran colonel who claimed to have been given the

rock by the former dictator of Honduras, Oswaldo Enrique Lopez Ariano. They got the $5 million from the former presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perrault for the sting operation and managed to nab the guy selling it in Miami on customs charges for failing to declare it upon entry into the country. After that, Goody Heinz left NASA but kept an interest in tracking down Goodwill Moon Rocks. It turns out of the 270 given out to other countries, a full 180 of them were missing. Even the rocks given to Delaware and New Jersey have disappeared. Many of the rocks have simply been misplaced or lost or were put in storage and forgotten.

In 2007, this is where I enter the story. Normally, I'll toss in a humble brag when I'm recording an episode and mention someplace I visited that's relevant to the discussion. In this case, I actually did have a very tiny part to play in the story. In 2007, I was visiting the nation of the Solomon Islands, and I was in the capital city of Honiara. I was visiting the National Museum, when, to my surprise, amongst all the cultural artifacts from the country, I saw a wooden plaque and the goodwill moon rock given to the Solomon Islands in 1978 when they became a country. It was in a display case, the kind you might see in a department store, and there were no locks on the case whatsoever. I had previously read about the $5 million sales price put on the moonrock, and it seemed I was the only person in the Solomon Islands who knew the value of what was sitting in the case.

I asked one of the museum staff if I could take the plaque out to photograph it because I was an American, and they said, sure, no problem. I then wrote an article about the discovery of the moon rock on my blog, and I proceeded to contact none other than Joseph Gutein's, who thanked me for tracking down the Solomon Islands moon rock and promised to get on the case. Over the year since I found the moon rock in the museum, I've been contacted by several people who read my article, visited Honiara, and confirmed that the moon rock was still there. Where have the rest of the goodwill moon rocks gone? The answer is, no one knows. If you are personally interested in seeing and even touching an actual moon rock from the moon, there is only one place you can do it. The lobby of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It's known as the touch rock.

The idea for the touch rock came from former Apollo lunar scientist Farouk al-Baz, who, when he made a pilgrimage to Mecca as a child, touched the black stone at the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam. He thought it would be interesting to replicate the idea with a piece of the moon. What is interesting is that NASA right now is planning for a return to the moon with the Artemis program. The size of the landers and the amount of equipment that can be sent to the moon and returned will be significantly more than the Apollo program. It is entirely possible that the future supply of moon rocks might explode and the price of moon rocks might drop dramatically.

Maybe even cheap enough for you to buy a piece of the moon for yourself. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.