[meteorite-list] LOTS OF MOON ROCKS GONE?
Galactic Stone & Ironworks
meteoritemike at gmail.com
Mon Dec 12 16:13:50 EST 2011
Hi Randy,
Thanks for the input and clarification on this issue. Again, the
media takes the sensational route when it comes to meteorite
reporting.
When I first read the article, the details surrounding the missing
specimens was not made clear, and I had assumed that large
"rock-sized" specimens were missing from the central holding facility.
(Johnson?) The photos of the large rocks accompanying the article
furthered this misconception. I should know better by now.
Best regards,
MikeG
--
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Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
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On 12/12/11, Randy Korotev <korotev at wustl.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
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