Apollo can openers

A piercing tool built by ESA is set to open a Moon soil container from Apollo 17 that has gone untouched for nearly 50 years.

The gas extraction experiment is part of the larger Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) programme that coordinates the analysis of pristine Moon samples from the Apollo era.

Francesca McDonald, science and project lead of ESA’s contribution to ANGSA, and colleague Timon Schild travelled in November 2021 to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, to deliver the piercing tool and train the lunar sample curation team on how to operate it.

ESA’s piercing tool, jokingly called the “Apollo can opener” amongst the team, can puncture the Moon sample vacuum container to aid capturing the trapped gases as they escape.