President Joe Biden has made a decoration choice that is failing the space community: there is a moon rock in the Oval Office.
The Washington Post got a glimpse into Biden’s new excavations. And one sentence in the article – a moon rock on a bookshelf meant to remind Americans of the ambition and achievements of previous generations’ – inspired many happy tweets.
“Thank you so much to @POTUS for putting a @ NASA moon rock in the Oval Office – look what we as a country can do together if we are united,” said Ellen Stofan, the John and Adrienne Mars director of the Smithsonian’s National Air. and Space Museum, said on Twitter. Stofan served as NASA’s Chief Scientist from 2013 to 2016, and she led Biden’s transition team for NASA.
Here is the bookshelf next to the Benjamin Franklin painting in the @POTUS oval office with the moon rock https://t.co/zGqvDEQwNO pic.twitter.com/22rFkXDHvq
– AC Charania (@ac_charania) 21 January 2021
AC Charania, director of civil space sales at Blue Origin, has begun finding the origin of the rock.
In collaboration with others, he initially thought the rock might have been a vesicular basalt of Apollo 11 previously offered to President Bill by President Apollo 11 Crew. But NASA gave clarity Thursday. The rock is Lunar Monster 76015,143 which was cut off from the moon during the Apollo 17 mission, the last time NASA sent astronauts to the lunar surface.
The 332 gram piece was collected in 1972. It is a 3.9 billion-year-old monster formed during the last major impact event on the near side of the moon.
“In symbolic recognition of previous generations’ ambitions and achievements, and support for America’s current moon to Mars reconnaissance approach, a lunar rock is now sitting in the Oval Office of the White House,” NASA said in its news release.
Meenakshi Wadhwa, director of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, can not wait until A Mars rock is returned to Earth to be placed next to the moon rock (NASA’s Perseverance Rover is ready to collect monsters from Mars, and a future mission may return these monsters). Photographer Joshua Conti says he feels “fairly confident that we’re still staring.”
“I like how excited my timeline is that there’s a moon rock in the Oval Office,” said Ph.D. student Alexander Kling.
And the moon rock was not the only space news that came from Biden’s inauguration. He also named Steve Jurczyk as acting administrator of NASA. Jurczyk was previously NASA’s co-administrator, the agency’s top official. He will hold the title of acting administrator until Biden nominates his replacement, who many believe could be NASA’s first female administrator.
Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine resigned on Wednesday. In a heartfelt video, where Bridenstine was on the verge of tears, he said it was the work of a lifetime.
He also called for unity and support for NASA’s new leadership team.
“If we get rid of divisions, and we can get the bipartisan, non-political consensus with commercial partners and international partners,” Bridenstine said, “I think it puts us in an excellent position to move forward in a meaningful way. which not only crosses several administrations, but also multi-decades and in fact multi-generations. ”
The agency’s future priorities remain a question mark, as Biden has said little about his vision for NASA and beyond. But the small lunar rock has given many people hope to pursue a powerful quest for space exploration.
This article has been updated with NASA’s description of the lunar rock.