Here at Goddard, we have labs specifically designed to study rocks from the Moon, looking for clues about the Moon’s history. The Artemis program will bring back samples of lunar rocks and dust, some of which will be studied right here. But this won’t be the first time our researchers have investigated Moon rocks. Samples from Apollo studied for the last fifty years and counting give us important insights into what astronauts might expect to encounter in the Moon’s polar regions.

Video description:
0:00 “Goddard Space Flight Center presents Spaceback” reads against a grainy black background
0:02 A man in a white shirt and black tie walks while looking at a piece of paper. The video is grainy with age.
0:06 He gestures with the paper to two other men, who are sitting in front of a large machine.
0:09 “Isidore Adler, Senior Scientist” appears on screen in black text.
0:13 Isidore gets up and sits down in front of a keyboard.
0:15 Black equipment with red numbers rapidly changing.
0:19 A petri dish on a microscope, partly filled with gray grains of regolith. Someone is picking up individual pieces with a paintbrush and painting them on a slide.
0:23 A wider angle on the man brushing regolith samples on the slide.
0:27 A view through the microscope at these tiny grains of regolith, which look like dark gray gravel.
0:31 A hand holding a slide with a thin layer of lunar dust in the center.
0:33 A wider view of the man holding the slide, preparing to put it under a microscope.
0:37 Fade to Natalie Curran talking0 in front of a backdrop that looks like the surface of the Moon. Her name and “Lunar Geologist” are written in white font.
0:40 Pan down a grayscale photo of the lunar landscape, with a big rock in the foreground. Text reads “These lunar samples are from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.”
0:45 The pan fades into a pan down from a sunset sky to the orange SLS rocket on the launchpad.
0:47 Fade into an image of the Moon, with labels where Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 landed.
0:49 The Moon orbits away from the landing sites.
0:51 Timelapse of someone in a lab coat, hair net, gloves, and face mask working under a protective hood, unwrapping samples.
00:52 Natalie standing in a lab, wearing gloves and preparing a sample.
00:55 Conceptual animations of astronauts working on the Moon.

Music: "Life Cycles," "Secret Hours," Universal Production Music

Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Ryan Fitzgibbons

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