Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Episode 268. Astro Materials 3D. I'm Pat Ryan. On this podcast, we talk with scientists,

engineers, astronauts, and other folks about their part in America's space exploration program.

And today, we're going to show you how you can play with some moon rocks.

When NASA landed six Apollo missions on the moon, each of those pair of astronauts

had some quantity of moon rocks and dust with them when their lunar excursion module

jumped off of the gray surface headed for rendezvous with the command module to bring them home to earth.

All told, 842 pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand, and dust came back to earth.

That's all. And it all came right here to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston

to a building over on the other side of the campus from where I'm sitting today.

From there, the people and facilities in what is today called the Astro Materials Research

and Exploration Science Division, Areas, examined and cataloged those pieces of the moon,

studied them, and have and still do administer a program that sends samples to scientists for research.

Too bad regular folks like you and me can't see them, right?

Well, we can. Some of them thanks to a program that has created a virtual library of NASA's

space rock collections in high resolution, three-dimensional image models that you can access

from your home computer and not just stuff from the moon, but meteorites collected in Antarctica.

Perhaps one day samples return to earth from comets and from Mars.

The science principal investigator and project lead for the Astro Materials 3D project

is Erika Blumenfeld, who describes herself as a transdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on

stories of connection across the cosmos, stories that intersect with art and science and nature

and culture. She has a bachelor of fine arts from the Parsons School of Design and a master of

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