[meteorite-list] LOTS OF MOON ROCKS GONE?

[Randy Korotev]

I'd like to address this issue of missing Apollo samples as a researcher.

I just checked my inventory.  I have 999 (really!) line items of 
samples from the 6 Apollo and 3 Russian Luna landing sites from 
NASA.  I can think of only 1 or 2 other researchers who might have 
more.  The total mass is 320.064 g (0.08% of the collection).  That's 
an average of 0.32 g/sample.  But, even that number is 
misleading.  The mass distribution looks like this.

http://meteorites.wustl.edu/Korotev_NASA_Apollo_&_Luna_samples.jpg

Only 49 of the samples exceed 1 gram is mass.  All of the samples >3 
g are not "rocks" but regolith (alias soil or dust) samples.  The 
smallest samples are all thin sections.

My point is that every article about this issue shows a photo of a 
big rock, and NASA just doesn't issue big rocks to us 
researchers.  As someone else mentioned, I suspect the actual mass of 
missing material is not large.

Randy Korotev