Have you ever considered the possibility that a cockroach might contain ancient Moon dust inside? Among the items open for bids on New Hampshire’s Remarkable Rarities Auction is a quantity of Moon dust brought from the Moon that has been used in feeding experiments of the world’s “favourite bugs”.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the Moon in 1969, they gathered plenty of Moon rock for the return trip. The first humans on the Moon brought back 21.6 kilograms of samples, including 50 rocks, lunar soil samples, and lunar soil samples from deeper under the surface.
These samples were transported back to Earth for analysis. The lunar samples were used in a number of scientific studies, including giving a cockroach to feed to see what would happen. Marion Brooks, associate professor of entomology, as special advisor to NASA’s resident entomologist, was one of the scientists who obtained these first lunar samples. His project was to study the effects of consuming lunar soil on insects.
Although this may seem like a strange idea given what we know about the lifelessness of the lunar surface, there were many unknowns at the time. For example, the crew of Apollo 11 spent 21 days in quarantine after returning due to the risk that our satellite may contain dangerous microorganisms.
Brooks’ experiment was to take animals, including commercial oysters, pink shrimp, German cockroaches, and flies, and have them eat ground moon soil. One group of animals ate ground sterilized Moon powder mixed into their food, another group ate unsterilized Moon powder, and an unlucky control group ate no Moon powder at all.
However, as you can imagine, there was no effect. The highest mortality was seen in a group of small fish in the control group that died after their tanks were poured with disinfectant. After the experiment, slides of the tissues of the animals were created, some of which will go up for auction. Suspecting that there would be no organisms on the Moon, Brooks was surprised to find that the samples did not harm the stomachs of the cockroaches.
“We thought there would be sharp, jagged edges when the lunar sample was ground,” he said in a statement at the time. “But there were no signs of wear or scratches.”
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