A piece of Luna for Joe Biden's office

It is called Lunar Sample 76015.143, more simply a piece of the Moon brought to Earth in 1972 by the men of the 17th and last Apollo mission. Kept for nearly half a century in the NASA-run Johnson Space Center's Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, it is now in the Oval Office that just saw Joe Biden settle in.

Lunar Sample 76015,143 in the White House

To ask the new US President in person with a symbolic gesture that testifies to the ambitions of the United States on the front of space exploration. His administration will see the Artemis project materialize, bringing mankind back to our satellite after decades, then pointing further forward to Mars.

Good morning America! You all seem thrilled about Biden's moon rock. Its symbolism, of the scientific and exploratory achievements that have been made - and will ideally soon be surpassed - certainly hits home.

What you might not know is that rock has an * epic * backstory. 1 / x pic.twitter.com/PACzEwzr7v

- Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 22, 2021



In the image above Lunar Sample 76015 , 143 is in its case. The flat sides are the result of the work carried out in NASA laboratories in order to study their characteristics and composition. For the rest it remained as astronauts Ronald Evans, Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan extracted it from the lunar soil.

This 322 gram piece of the Moon, extracted in 1972, is 3.9 billion years old and is a sample formed during the last major impact on the side closest to us, in the Imbrium sea which measures 1,145 kilometers in diameter.

Source: SlashGear