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NATALIE: There are still so many questions locked up in these rocks. It's exciting times just to be studying them.

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BARBARA: So we have a big window (a big gap) in our understanding of the early Earth, and the moon preserves that history.

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Where did all of this stuff come from? How did it form? What was the process? Does it happen all the time across the universe?

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Or, are we somehow unique or at least a usual? What does all mean?

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NARRATOR: I'm Katie Atkinson and this is NASA explorers Apollo

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where we tell stories about our moon and the people who explore it.

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[ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE]

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[MUSIC]

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NARRATOR: When astronauts travelled to the Moon, they explored its mysterious surface.

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[ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE: Look at this soil! It’s all cake-looking, isn’t it? Yeah it is! Okay, let me get the soil before you start whacking, okay? Oh yeah! Very good…]

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They collected bits of soil, rock and dust to bring back to Earth.

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And they were pretty excited about it.

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[ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE: Oh! Hey! There is orange soil! Well, don't move until I see it. It's all over! Orange! Don't move until I see it!]

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NARRATOR: Each sample was carefully harvested and preserved so that scientists of the future could learn more about the past.

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Inside of those samples? Rich stories about the age of our moon and clues about its history.

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Natalie Curran is one of the keepers of these tiny precious artifacts.

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She's been thinking about Apollo since she was a kid.

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[Music]

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NATALIE: I think it was my uncle that brought me back (he went to Kennedy Space Center)

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and he brought me a pack of post cards, with all images from Apollo 11.

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They went all up around my wall when I was a child.

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Ever since I've always wanted to do something with space.

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[MUSIC]

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NARRATOR: These days Natalie calls herself a lazy astronaut.

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The moon rocks come to her instead of the other way around.

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Natalie is a NASA postdoctoral fellow and a planetary scientist who spends her days with Apollo samples.

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NATALIE: I'm currently working in our MNGRL lab which stands for Mid-Atlantic noble-gas research lab, which is here at NASA Goddard.

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NARRATOR: Natalie focuses specifically on samples from Apollo 16,

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which she looks at to learn more about the formation of the surface of our moon.

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NATALIE: So, a lot of the samples that we have are quite old. So they're some of the older rocks that you'll get on the moon.

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We're looking at rocks that are older than four billion years old.

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Every time you look at something or think of something like that, what you just analyzed is older

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than anybody that we know, anything that we know as living, and that, again,

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is quite an amazing kind of achievement just in its own way to be holding and analyzing these ancient rocks.

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NARRATOR: As it turns out, the moon can teach us a lot about the history of our solar system.

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Scientists like Natalie study lunar rocks, soil, dust and sand.

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She and her fellow scientists weigh, measure and scrutinize samples to find answers

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and sometimes, even more questions.

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The process teaches scientists about the makeup and evolution of our moon,

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but it also reveals plenty about our home planet.

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NATALIE: Unlike the Earth, which, we've had quite a complex history of plate tectonics,

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where it's erased some of the surface,

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the moon hasn't had any plate tectonics like that. So the actual surface of the Moon

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provides the perfect archive of both lunar history and solar history

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that we can go collect some different age samples tell us a lot about how

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the moon and the solar system has evolved.

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[MUSIC]

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BARBARA: The moon goes farther back in our past than we can on the Earth.

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The Earth and the moon formed together at about the same time

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four and a half billion years ago. It's a really long time ago. But because we have water

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on the Earth and plate tectonics and a whole bunch of things that erase our surface and renew our surface,

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the rocks on the earth don't go back further than about three billion years.

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So we have a big window (a big gap) in our understanding of the early Earth and the moon preserves that history.

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NARRATOR: That's Barbara Cohen. She started and leads the MNGRL lab.

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Her team studies noble gases to learn more about the age of the lunar samples.

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BARBARA: And those gases are interesting to us because they help us tell when that rock was made and how it was made

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and what process is it underwent. So we are trying to understand the geology of another planet through its rocks

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And we use those gases to trace the processes that it went through on another planet.

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The element Potassium decays overtime to the element Argon which is a noble gas.

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And so we look at the ratio of potassium to argon in the rock and we say how much potassium was there to begin with

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and how much has decayed to the element Argon overtime? That's a little clock inside the Rock.

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NARRATOR: While scientists like Natalie and Barbara are interested in lunar and solar history,

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NASA's astrochemists, like Jaime El Cielo,

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want to know what the samples can tell them about the origins of life

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A lot of times what I'm doing is working in a lab with meteorites or other extraterrestrial samples,

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including the lunar soil samples that we've worked with. I will take these samples, grind them up into a powder,

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seal them up in a vial with water and heat them and basically make meteorite tea or lunar tea out of them.

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I'm pulling out the soluble compounds and I try to understand how these chemical compounds formed

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and evolved and were distributed in the early solar system.

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[ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE: Okay, let me get to the soil before you start whacking okay?]

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BARBARA: I'm very grateful for the scientists who had the foresight to

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archive these examples and for the curators who kept them all this time in a state

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that was ready for us to be able to look at

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JAMIE: It didn't as a kid seemed like something spectacular to me. I was just part of history. But now when I get to handle these

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lunar samples in the lab and I stop and think about what it took to bring these back to Earth and where they've been and

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what the history of the samples is, sometimes I'm working in the lab and I just stop

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and I'm just overwhelmed by this amazement.

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NARRATOR: Each sample, carefully cultivated by lunar explorers, reveals more about the moon

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and planet Earth.

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[MUSIC]

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There's still so many questions locked up in these rocks that it's exciting times just to be studying them.

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NARRATOR: Barbara, Natalie and Jamie will have the opportunity to keep learning about our moon very soon.

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They were recently selected to open up and study never-before-seen Apollo samples.

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Who knows what they'll uncover in the future.

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[MUSIC]

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We asked you to help NASA tell the story of Apollo.

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Hundreds of people answered from all over the world.

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Here's what Sophie, a 13-year-old from Greece, had to say.

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SOPHIE: Hi, I am 13 years old. I am from Greece and I live in Athens.

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I am very interested in space exploration and I would like to become an astrophysicist.

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Even though I was not born when the first humans walked on the moon, the Apollo program means a lot to me.

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The Apollo program and all of the people who worked in order to make the impossible possible

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inspired me in a way that changed my whole life.

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Now, after having learned all of these things about the Apollo Mission, whenever I look at the Moon,

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I dream about where the humankind is capable of going.

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When I think of the Moon I feel wonder and admiration because of the fact that humans have been there

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and because of the fact that this act has inspired hundreds of thousands of people, including myself.

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Furthermore, whenever I think of the Moon, I think that humans are now maybe,

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after so many years of space exploration, to make a step further of the Moon to Mars

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and who knows, maybe in a few years, even further to the interstellar space.

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I believe that the Apollo program made it clear that the sky isn't the limit.

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[MUSIC]

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What do you remember about Apollo?

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Or, what space exploration do you hope to see in your lifetime?

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We want to hear your Apollo stories. Visit nasa.gov/apollostories to learn how to get involved.

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This is the only long-term information that we have from the surface of the Moon.

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I don't think the search for data is over with.

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Where did all of this stuff come from? How did it form? What was the process?

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Does it happen all the time across the universe? Or are we somehow unique or at least unusual? What does it all mean?

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[MUSIC]