Archivist finds vials of moon dust from 1969 mission in storage

Karen Nelson, an archivist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., was sorting through artifacts recently when she uncovered something unusual: about 20 vials with handwritten labels dated “24 July, 1970,” containing moon dust.

The samples were brought back for study by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldr in’s mission in 1969, but instead of being sent to NASA after they’d been analyzed, they were tucked away, only to be rediscovered more than 40 years later.

“We don’t know how or when they ended up in storage,” says Nelson, an archivist of 17 years.

The vials have been sent back to NASA for safekeeping.