Head of the Laboratory of Geochemistry of the Moon and Planets at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yevgeny Slyuta has revealed a way to acquire a piece of a natural satellite of the Earth. RIA Novosti reports.
The scientist said that now the lunar soil cannot be bought, since it belongs to the states that brought it to Earth – Russia and the United States. At the auction, you can only buy lunar meteorites that have fallen on our planet, but this will be quite expensive, since they are very rare. At the same time, he pointed out, 99 percent of the samples that are brought to the laboratory are not lunar meteorites.
Yevgeny Sluta called the ads for the sale of lunar soil on the Internet fakes. People can believe them, because “the level of education has decreased in the last couple of decades,” the scientist explained. At the same time, if such an acquisition was still successful, you should make sure of the authenticity of the purchase by contacting the laboratory. However, for examination, scientists will take a small part of the meteorite into their collection.
In 1970, the lunar soil was brought to Earth by the Soviet automatic interplanetary station “Luna-16”. This was the first delivery of soil from the moon using an automated station. Prior to this, the soil was brought to Earth by American astronauts.
Earlier it was reported that scientists from the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics and Planetology discovered a mysterious rust on the moon, which is usually observed on Earth. Researchers believe that it was formed by the oxidation of iron by oxygen from the Earth's upper atmosphere, which is blown out by the same solar wind. When the Moon is in the tail of the Earth's magnetosphere, oxygen enters the satellite's surface.
