NASA Lends Moon Rock To Biden, Displays It In Oval Office At White House

There's a new rock in the White House, and it is out of this world.

NASA has loaned out a moon rock from its Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility located at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The moon rock, which is currently displayed in President Joe Biden's Oval Office, was revealed last Wednesday, on the new president's Inauguration Day.

The space agency explained on its website that the loaned moon rock is symbolic of the past ambitions and accomplishments of older generations, and it serves as a sign of support toward America’s current Moon to Mars exploration approach.

The lunar sample is placed in a protective case with an attached plaque explaining its history. The inscription reveals that the moon rock came from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, led by astronaut Ronald Evans and moonwalkers Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan.

"Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans and moonwalkers Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last humans to set foot on the Moon, chipped this sample from a large boulder at the base of the North Massif in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, 3 km (almost 2 miles) from the Lunar Module," it said.

The inscription then continued to describe the moon rock's sample, noting that it originated during an impact that happened on the moon about 4 billion years ago.

"This 332-gram piece of the Moon (less than a pound), which was collected in 1972, is a 3.9-billion-year-old sample formed during the last large impact event on the nearside of the Moon, the Imbrium Impact Basin, which is 1,145 km or 711.5 miles in diameter."

The lunar sample can be seen as having tiny craters due to micrometeorite impacts that have sand-blasted the rock over millions of years. The flat, sawed sides, on the other hand, were created in NASA's Lunar Curation Laboratory when scientists cut out samples to use for research.

The moon rock's presence in the White House serves as a good demonstration of President Biden's faith in NASA and its Artemis program, which aims to bring humans back on the moon in preparation for a Mars exploration in the future.