Tucked away with each rock and soil sample collected by the NASA’s Perseverance rover is a potential boon for atmospheric scientists.
“The gas samples have a lot to offer Mars scientists,” said Justin Simon a geochemist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
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“People think of the Moon as airless, but it has a very tenuous atmosphere that interacts with the lunar surface rocks over time,” said Simon, who studies a variety of planetary samples at Johnson. “That includes noble gases leaking out of the Moon’s interior and collecting at the lunar surface.”