NASA has lent a monthly rock for display in the White House Oval Office at the request of President Joe Biden’s new administration.
The request is made “in symbolic recognition of the ambitions and achievements of previous generations and in support of the current approach to exploring America between the moon and Mars,” NASA reports.
The object comes from the Lunar Sample laboratory facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and, in his case, is listed as a monthly sample 76015,143.
Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last humans to set foot on the moon, took a large rock from the base of the Northern Taurus-Littrow Massif, 3 kilometers from the Lunar Module, according to information gathered in showcase.
The 332-gram piece of the Moon was collected in 1972 and is a 3.9 billion-year-old sample formed during the last major impact event on the near side of the Moon, the Imbrium impact basin, which has a diameter of 1,145 Kilometres.
The uneven surfaces of the samples contain small craters created when the impact of micrometeorite polished the rock over millions of years. The flat, serrated sides were created at NASA’s Lunar Healing Laboratory when the sheet for scientific research was cut.
On the other hand, President Biden has appointed Steve Jurczyk as NASA’s administrator in anticipation of his final appointment to the agency. As an associate administrator since May 2018, Jurczyk has relieved Jim Bridenstine and is one of the 34 high-ranking officials announced by the new administration a few hours after taking office.