Exactly where--pounds--have the 830 lbs. of Apollo moon rocks been distributed around the world?

Question

I guess I'm wondering if anyone keeps account of how much moonrockage goes where. Can anyone tell me that these rocks--if all gathered back together--would equal the weight that NASA has always said they would?

Answer 1

The majority are still at the Lunar Receiving Lab;  Nixon, at the time, made a point of giving about an ounce of the rocks to each government on Earth, and I believe there are 45 that are on display at various museums around the world (Or, there were that many in the late 1990's.)

Aside from some experiments (vaporizing some portion of the samples), they *should* total about what the astronauts brought back.  (And, it was 842 pounds, not 830.)

In addition, there were 3 Soviet unmanned landers that returned a combined 3/4 of an ounce as well.  

Answer 2

At least some of the Moon rocks are in Australia, there is a piece about the size of a fist at the deep space tracking station at Tidbinbilla near Canberra.  Other portions were analysed by geochemists in multiple laboratories round the world, so were dissolved in acids and alkalies and probably went down drains eventually.  No doubt sizable reserve samples are retained somewhere.  

The Russians also returned Moon rock samples by automated probes and strange to say, the chemical analyses they got matched the American samples.      

Answer 3

The main repository for the Apollo Moon rocks is the Lunar Sample Building at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For safe keeping, there is also a smaller collection stored at Brooks Air Force Base at San Antonio, Texas. Most of the rocks are stored in nitrogen to keep them free of moisture. They are only handled indirectly using special tools.

Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration are currently considered priceless. In 1993, three small fragments weighing 0.2 g from Luna 16 were sold for US$442,500. In 2002 a safe was stolen from the Lunar Sample Building containing minute samples of lunar and martian material. The samples were recovered and, in 2003, NASA estimated the value of these samples for the court case at about $1 million for 285 g (10 oz.) of material. Moon rocks in the form of lunar meteorites, although expensive, are widely sold and traded among private collectors.

Approximately two hundred small samples were mounted and presented to national governments and U.S. governors. At least one of these was later stolen, sold and recovered. Other samples went to select museums, including the National Air and Space Museum, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, the Ontario Science Centre, and to the visitor center at Kennedy Space Center where it is possible to "touch a piece of the moon", which is in fact a small moon rock concreted into a pillar in the center of a bank vault that visitors tour. The Tribune Tower in Chicago has a small piece in a display case facing Michigan Ave. NASA says that almost 295 kg (650 lb) of the original 382 kg (842 lb) of samples are still in pristine condition in the vault at Johnson Space Center.

NASA has made a number of educational packs comprising a disc of six small rock and soil samples in a lucite disc and a pack of petrological thin sections. They are available for exhibition and educational purposes in many countries, including Great Britain, where the samples are kept by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.