It was recently reported that NASA was opening lunar samples that had been
vacuum-packed on the moon and that had never been exposed to the
Earth's atmosphere.
In the past 50 years since the Apollo missions, the sophistication of
scientific instrumentation and analytical techniques has improved,
giving the potential to make new discoveries from pristine samples.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Johnston Space Center (JSC)
in Houston, the tour guide may have pointed out Building 31N on the
campus, which is the purpose-built Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility
where most of the lunar rocks and soil samples are housed and have
been analysed by teams of scientists nearly every day for the past
50 years.
The lab's collection consists of 382 kilograms of lunar material, comprising
2200 individual specimens which have been processed into more than
110,000 individually cataloged samples.
Since the lunar rocks are regarded as a priceless national treasure of
inestimable scientific value, about 15 percent are also kept in
safekeeping at White Sands in New Mexico.
Marcia Dunn at Associated Press provides a follow-up story today
(June 26th 2019) on the unsealing of the pristine samples :-
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-nasa-m...-missions.html