So, as I have mentioned before in some of my blogs, I had the opportunity this past summer to do research at NASA's Johnson Space Center. While I was there I was lucky enough to do a lot of very cool things, such as; seeing an astronaut do some training, touring the entire facility, going through the meteorite and star dust laboratories, meeting Gene Kranz and Chris Kraft, hanging out in the Apollo Mission Control, and one of the most interesting and coolest things that I was able to do was the tour the Lunar Rocks laboratory. This was by far, one of the neatest experiences that I have ever had. If any of you ever get the chance to walk through this lab, do not pass it up. I was able to see, and handle (with gloves of course), some of the most important discoveries in NASA history. However, there were not too many samples out on the day that I toured, because the majority of the rocks are kept in a vault, but I was able to see the Genesis Rock. Which for those of you that do not know what this rock it, it was brought back with the crew of Apollo 15 and has been discovered to be about 4 billion years old. That means, that this rock was formed in the early stages of our solar system. There is so much that can be learned from this rock and others.

I guess the main purpose of me telling you this, is that these rocks were all brought back from the Apollo Missions, the last being in 1972. That means that we have not brought back any samples from the Moon in over 40 years. With the advances in technology today and the increased carrying capacity of our ships today, we would be capable of bringing back a much larger capacity of rocks. With this many more samples, we would be able to increase our knowledge of our solar system, as well as the rest of the galaxy and Universe. To me, this is reason enough to begin going back to the moon. If you have any thoughts on this manner, please comment below!

by: William K.

Tuesday Jan-15-2013