NASA to study previously unopened Apollo sample

As NASA plans to return humans to the Moon in 2024, scientists opened an untouched rock and soil sample from the Moon returned to Earth as part of the the US space agency's final mission of the Apollo programme. The sample, opened on Tuesday, was collected on the Moon by Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt, who drove a 4-cm-wide tube into the surface of the Moon to collect it and another sample scheduled to be opened in January 2020, NASA said in statement on Wednesday. The sample was opened as part of NASA's Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis initiative, which is leveraging advanced technologies to study Apollo samples using new tools that were not available when the samples were originally returned to Earth. "We are able to make measurements today that were just not possible during the years of the Apollo programme," said Sarah Noble, ANGSA programme scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.