| abstract
| - Planning for handling returned lunar samples began early in the Apollo program. In 1964, a proposal was made for a small ( square meter (sq ft)) sample receiving laboratory equipped with remote-controlled manipulators operating in a sterile, high-vacuum chamber to prepare samples for distribution to scientists, and this proposal was subsequently expanded to include a clean room with analytical instruments for performing preliminary analyses on the samples. A committee of the Space Science Board reviewed the idea of a lunar sample receiving laboratory and sought to address multiple concerns. One was the fear that creating a facility with too great a capacity to analyze the samples would discourage distribution of samples to outside researchers and effectively exclude them. In addition, space biologists and the United States Public Health Service expressed concern about "back contamination" of Earth by extraterrestrial microorganisms brought back via returning spacecraft, (although many of the astronauts and scientists involved in the program were skeptical that non-terrestrial microorganisms could survive lunar conditions). To address these issues, the committee in 1965 recommended a laboratory with limited analytical capacity and an ability to quarantine the returning astronauts and samples. The result of this planning was the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) in Building 37 at the Johnson Space Center, built to process and conduct basic analysis on lunar materials and to quarantine the materials and astronauts. (The requirement that astronauts be quarantined following their missions was dropped beginning with Apollo 15.) The -square-meter () LRL was completed in 1967 at a cost of $7.8 million. The LRL was used for study, distribution and safe storage of the samples, but although the LRL had adequate facilities to process samples for the current mission, the facility was not ideal, and it lacked facilities to process or store samples from previous missions. To address some of these concerns, NASA dropped the requirement after Apollo 12 that samples be processed in vacuum (in favor of a simpler-to-work-in nitrogen atmosphere). An additional vault and, subsequently, a new laboratory – the Sample Storage and Processing Laboratory (SSPL) – were built in Building 31 of the Johnson Space Center. All lunar samples were moved from the LRL to Building 31 after the last Apollo mission Nonetheless, there were still concerns about the adequacy of the facility and about the wisdom of maintaining the entire collection of lunar samples in a single facility that might be vulnerable to natural disasters (especially the hurricanes to which Houston is vulnerable) and military actions. The collection was divided among multiple vaults at the Johnson Space Center while a vault was built in an empty ammunition bunker at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas as second-site storage. Fourteen percent of the lunar sample collection was moved to this bunker in 1976, transported secretly at night with a police escort in a specially modified passenger bus. This smaller collection of materials remained at Brooks until 2002, when the base was transitioned from military control as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process. The second-site lunar materials were then moved to the White Sands Test Facility, where a new, smaller facility was built inside an existing secure building to house the samples. Of the kilogram (lb) of lunar samples returned by the Apollo program, kilogram (lb) are currently stored at White Sands. With a selection of the lunar samples secured offsite, construction began on the LSLF, with state-of-the-art facilities for handling the samples and better protection against natural disasters. The LSLF was constructed in a new annex of Building 31 (Building 31N at the Johnson Space Center) beginning in 1977. Built for a cost of $2.5 million, the building was dedicated on July 20, 1979, the tenth anniversary of the first manned moon landing.
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