At
Johnson Space Center, south of Houston, Texas, there’s a nondescript
building that contains things you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
And some things you might find, but you wouldn’t know their
significance. Building 31 has laboratories containing a curious and
carefully curated collection of objects from outer space. There are
rocks brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts, meteorites from
Mars, particles from the tail of a comet, and a precious but tiny amount
of solar wind particles.
NASA keeps some of its
most sensitive samples in the “Genesis” lab, which has the most rigorous
cleanliness protocols of any facility at the space center. The Genesis
lab houses particles from the solar wind, essentially tiny bits of the
Sun which hold clues about the composition of the solar nebula at the
time when the planets formed.
That morning we had been instructed
to not wear wedding rings, nor scented deodorant. In the anteroom we
had donned gloves, booties, and hair nets. In the “gowning” room, we had
put on masks, full-body polyester suits, head covers, boots over the
body suit and booties, and a second pair of gloves. Also, they’d taken
my notepad and given me “clean” paper—once inside I’d receive a clean
Sharpie pen. Nor did our photography equipment escape the cleanroom
regime: we had to spend several minutes rubbing down cameras and lenses
and tripods with alcohol wipes until the scientists were satisfied that
the devices were reasonably dust-free.
After this entire process,
we asked if the lab gets a lot of visitors. “I don’t take people in,”
Allton, the lab's curator, said. “You guys are special. The main reason
is, people are dirty.”
The general public doesn’t have access to those samples, but we can see them anyway. Ars Technica took plenty of
photographs and notes on their exclusive tour
to share with us. While the photos are fascinating, the best part of
the article are the stories of how these outer space samples came to be
there.
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