REAPING THE REWARDS OF THE APOLLO PROGRAM

You're sudying some of the rocks collected from the Apollo missions, how's that going?

MA: Only yesterday we were looking at those same rocks that Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] were collecting in this [8 Days: To the Moon and Back] documentary. I study rocks from all the Apollo missions and to me, I mean, even right now as I speak, I’ve got hairs rising on my back because I'm just so privileged to be given access to these precious samples, which NASA calls ‘the gift that keeps on giving’.

50 years on, over 380 kilograms of Moon rock and soil that were collected, more than half of it is still actually curated very well.

What discoveries have come from studying the samples?

MA: In the last ten years so many new discoveries have come about, and many of them because of having access to these Apollo samples. Some of the work that we have done at the Open University, for example, has been looking for water in these Moon rocks, and that has been a game-changer. In fact, that is one of