Lunar sample numbering and curation
Every Apollo 11 sample carries a unique number in the 10000s — the first block of the generic Apollo lunar sample numbering scheme, which reserves 10001–10099 for Apollo 11. (The 1977 catalogue documented samples through 10089; later compilations such as the Lunar Sample Compendium include higher numbers — e.g., 10091–10094.) The numbers were assigned during processing at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory; for example, the rocks and soils of the bulk sample were catalogued from these numbers as the containers were opened.
The Apollo 11 Lunar Sample Information Catalogue (JSC 12522) is the curation record: compiled by F. E. Kramer, D. B. Twedell, and W. J. A. Walton, Jr. at the NASA Johnson Space Center Sample Information Center (February 1977, revised edition), it documents each sample’s type, weight, photographs, the return container it came from (ALSRC #1003 Bulk or #1004 Documented), and its early processing and splitting history. This curation discipline — stable numbers, documented provenance, tracked splits — lets a single sample be subdivided and loaned to many laboratories over decades while preserving traceability.
The modern per-sample synthesis is the Lunar Sample Compendium (Meyer, NASA JSC), which gathers each sample’s analyses and its split genealogy — for example the bulk soil 10002 yielded the fines 10084 and 10086, and 10026 was divided into 10027 and 10028 — the traceable subdivision this numbering exists to support. Some “samples” were even born in the lab: basalt 10092 began as split 10002,22 — a rock that emerged from the bulk soil during processing and earned its own number.
The curation history can also alter what a sample appears to record, and the Compendium preserves three cautions worth carrying (provenance reconstruction): breccia 10023’s celebrated magnetization may be an LRL artifact — Frondel ran a hand magnet through the contingency soil during quarantine, and “the magnetism of 10023 is presumably due to this”; soil 10086, the organic reserve, was mistakenly left open for three hours in the bio-prep cabinet yet remains the organic investigators’ most-studied sample; and the early drive-tube weights (51 g and 65 g in the 1969 catalogs) were later corrected to 44.8 g and 53.4 g — “there is confusion about this,” the Compendium notes, after part of 10005 fell out of its cap.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Apollo 11 sample inventory
- Lunar sample collection and containers
- Apollo 11 sampling tools and containers
- Apollo 11 lunar sample types
- Lunar quarantine and back-contamination
- High-titanium mare basalt