[Rockhounds] NASA is just now opening a vacuum-sealed sample it took from the moon 50 years ago

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Fifty years ago, astronauts on one of NASA's Apollo missions hammered a
pair of tubes 14 inches long into the surface of the moon. Once the tubes
were filled with rocks and soil, the astronauts — Eugene Cernan and
Harrison "Jack" Schmitt — vacuum-sealed one of the tubes, while the other
was put in a normal, unsealed container. Both were brought back to Earth.

Now, scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston are preparing to
carefully open that first tube, which has remained tightly sealed all these
years since that 1972 Apollo 17 mission — the last time humans set foot on
the moon.

Why so long? To take advantage of the technology of the future — our
present.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085241811/nasa-moon-samples-apollo-artemis