Charis Krysher
2017-03-31
When I talk to people about my work at NASA I tell them, “I break moon rocks for a living!” This sounds totally outrageous given the preciousness of the Apollo sample collection, but it is a great way to grab the interest of the public so that I can talk about NASA and my job as a member of the lunar curation team.
JSC pioneered astromaterials curation through their work with the Apollo collection. We now curate all of NASAs astromaterials, with samples from Mars, the sun, asteroids, comets, other stars, and space-exposed hardware with embedded micro particles. It always surprises people that the Apollo samples continue to be such a vital component of planetary research. As new technologies emerge, we find new ways to extract data from the samples to fuel new scientific discoveries.
Having a better understanding of other planets through these samples, helps us design crewed missions, and hopefully those crewed missions will return more samples!
JSC pioneered astromaterials curation through their work with the Apollo collection. We now curate all of NASAs astromaterials, with samples from Mars, the sun, asteroids, comets, other stars, and space-exposed hardware with embedded micro particles. It always surprises people that the Apollo samples continue to be such a vital component of planetary research. As new technologies emerge, we find new ways to extract data from the samples to fuel new scientific discoveries.
Having a better understanding of other planets through these samples, helps us design crewed missions, and hopefully those crewed missions will return more samples!