Baking for the Moon

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.

The work with lunar material imposed a lot of stringent rules for material choices, cleanliness and operating procedures. Prior to leaving ESTEC, the final product underwent stringent cleaning and baking (heating to 180 degrees Celsius for 72 hours in a vacuum oven) to ensure meeting science and curation requirements.