It was on July 20, 1969, that NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong along with Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, earth's only natural satellite. After achieving the milestone feat, Armstrong delivered his iconic dialogue, "One small step for me, One giant leap for mankind." While returning back from the moon, the Apollo 11 mission collected 382 kilograms of the lunar samples, and scientists call it the 'holy grail'.
Since then, scientists have kept the lunar samples safely at the Johnson Space Centre. But now, it has been revealed that scientists have kept more lunar samples in a secret location other than the Johnson Space Centre.
Andrea Mosie, the Lab Manager at the Johnson Space Centre revealed that 15 percent of the total lunar samples collected are being stored in a secret remote location. Mosie made these remarks while talking in the 'Smarter Everyday' YouTube series.
"This is the pristine sample vault, and all the samples are actually still stored in nitrogen cabinets, and also separated by the mission. You can look up there, you can see the mission, just like that. This is Apollo 11, the first mission, these are the samples, all the samples – Apollo 11 over in that corner, that's Apollo 12, these are 14's, 15's, 16's and 17's," said Mosie, Express.co.uk reports.
Mosie also added that the remote facility is being maintained by the United States government to protect the lunar samples if Johnson Space Centre gets destroyed.
"There is another remote facility that we have, just in case the Johnson Space Centre was destroyed. We have 15 percent of the samples stored in a remote location for storage somewhere else is all I can say. That's why we call it remote," added Mosie.
Since the human landing on the moon, several conspiracy theorists have been outlandishly arguing that NASA has faked the moon landing to proclaim their dominance over the Soviet Union in the space race. However, American physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently dismissed these rumors and made it clear that NASA had actually landed on the moon. The physicist also lashed out at conspiracy theorists and argued that there are loads of irrefutable proofs that substantiate the moon landing.
