+ 1970 News Releases (7.6 Mb PDF file) - NASA

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483-5111 MSC 70-59
May 26, 1970
HOUSTON, TEXAS--A lemon-sized lunar rock returned by the Apollo
12 crew has been found to be chemically unique and possess the highest
concentration of naturally radioactive elements yet observed in Moon
samples. After preliminary examination by NASA and University scientists
it was announced Tuesday that "this rock has an apparent age of 4.6
billion years, clearly the oldest rock yet found on the Moon."
During examination of Apollo 12 samples at the Lunar Receiving
Laboratory (LRL) at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas,
this S3-gram (approximately three ounces) specimen was found to have
20 times as much Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium as any other lunar
rock. A group of NASA aha U_Jiversity scientists in the U. 8.
and England were selected and samples of this rare rock -- speeiman
#12013 (1 1/2" x 1" x 3/4 ': in size) -- are now under investigation.
Announcement of this new 'find' was made jointly at the NASA
Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston_ Texas and at the 13th annual
meeting of the coimmittee on space research (COSPAR) of the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) in Leningrad_ Russia. Anthony J.
Cello, Director of Science and Applications at _C and Dr. Paul Gast,
Chief of Lunar and Earth Sciences Division at MSC announced the unique
find along with Dr. G. J. Wasserberg_ who presented a paper on the
subject at COSPAR. Dr. Wasserberg, California Institute of Technology,
is one of the U. S. University scientists working on this particular
sample.
The preliminary exsmination at the LRL further revealed that the
rock had a texture readily distinguishable from both the breccia and
igneous rock samples. Color variations on the surface of the rock
suggested that the rock was macrcscopically inhomogeneous.
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