How do astronauts collect rocks on the Moon?
Apollo astronauts used special tongs, rakes, scoops, hammers and tubes, and sealed rocks in bags and boxes to bring them home.
Between 1969 and 1972, twelve astronauts walked on the Moon and collected about 382 kilograms of rocks and soil. Collecting rocks in a bulky spacesuit was not easy!
Astronauts wore thick gloves that made it hard to pick up small things, and their suits made bending down difficult. So they used special tools:
- Tongs, like long kitchen tongs, to pick up rocks without bending. - Scoops on long handles to dig up soil. - Rakes to sift pebbles from the soil. - Hammers to chip off pieces of bigger rocks. - Core tubes, hollow pipes pushed or hammered into the ground to collect layers of soil. - Drills on later missions to collect deeper cores.
They photographed each rock before collecting it, so scientists would know exactly where it came from. Then they put samples in numbered bags and packed them in sealed metal boxes to keep them clean.
Back on Earth, the samples were stored in special cabinets filled with nitrogen gas, to keep them from reacting with air and water. Some were kept sealed for about 50 years and only opened recently, so scientists could study them with new instruments.
Today, robot spacecraft from China have also collected Moon rocks, using drills and scoops controlled from Earth.