Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #478
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iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
NASA Fed Some of Its Precious Apollo 11 Lunar Samples To Cockroaches
By Allen Kim, CNN
(CNN)Scientists from NASA had a lot more leeway to conduct weird experiments 50 years ago, which included feeding moon dust to German cock- roaches.
But it didn't stop there.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were able to secure lunar samples from the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 mis- sion and bring them back to Earth. However, in order to ensure that it was safe to store lunar sam- ples on Earth, scientists had to run a number of tests to make sure contamina- tion was not pos- sible, according to NASA.
Armstrong and Aldrin were quar- antined for weeks on their return from the moon, and they had a few extra room-
mates: mice that had been injected with lunar materi- al.
"They always wanted to know how the rodents were doing," Judith Hayes, chief of NASA's Biomedical Research and Environmental Sciences divi- sion, told Space.com. "If the rodents did well, then they would likely be released on time, if the rodents weren't well, they would likely be examined much more carefully and longer."
NASA also chose a number of dif- ferent animals to represent other species. Birds were represented by Japanese quail; brown shrimp, pink shrimp and oys- ters were used to represent shell- fish; houseflies and moths joined the cockroaches to represent insects; and gup- pies and min- nows were used to represent fish.
As for how they all received the samples, it var- ied. The quail and mice
received injec- tions, moon dust was added to the water for all the aquatic species and the insects had lunar sam- ples mixed into their food.
The only species to suffer deaths were the oysters, which scientists believe had more to do with them being tested dur- ing mating sea- son.
"We had to prove that we weren't going to contami- nate not only human beings, but we weren't going to contami-
nate fish and birds and animals and plants and you name
it," said Charles Berry, head of medical opera- tions during Apollo, in an oral history. "Any of the Earth's bios- phere, we had to prove we weren't going to affect it. Sowehadto develop an amazing program that was carried off really for three flights' worth. A lot of trouble."
NASA even worked with the US Department of Agriculture to test if plants
reacted negative- ly to the lunar material. They grew seeds in lunar soil, and tested tomatoes, onions, fern, cab- bage and tobac- co.
"They didn't find any microbial growth on the lunar samples, and they didn't have any microorganisms that they at least initially attributed to any extrater- restrial source or lunar source," said Hayes. "And the crew didn't have any signs of an infectious dis- ease, and all the rodents survived the exams, so everybody did well."
It wasn't until after the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 that NASA felt it was safe enough to stop testing on ani- mals and to end the quarantine process for astro- nauts and lab technicians work- ing with any lunar samples.
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