Where are the rocks on a moon rover stored? Some people say it's turned into powder.
And how do they collect the rocks from Mars?
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4$\begingroup$ Your enthusiasm for space exploration is welcome! To get a good, specific answer, your questions here should be more specific though. Which moon rovers are you asking about? And what do you mean by "collect the rocks from Mars"? $\endgroup$ – Organic Marble Oct 23 '19 at 15:59
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1$\begingroup$ One thing I would suggest is "turned into powder" is false. Moon rocks are igneous, therefore very hard, therefore difficult to powder. And scientists might want see how mineral components are arranged in the rock, information which powdering would lose. $\endgroup$ – Oscar Lanzi Oct 23 '19 at 16:26
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At the moon, some powder (dust) was collected with the rocks, but the rocks themselves weren't turned into powder at the time.
Individual samples were stored in small sample bags ... Individual sample bags were collected into larger sample collection bags for transport back to the lunar module. These large bags could be attached to an astronaut's backpack (as shown here) or to the lunar rover. ... For return to Earth, the samples were stowed in storage boxes.
-- https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/samples/apollo/tools/
We haven't yet collected and retrieved rock samples from Mars. For now we use meteorites that originated from Mars and somehow got ejected from there and landed on Earth.
answered Oct 23 '19 at 16:57
