PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN is sharing the Oval Office with a visitor from another world: a lunar rock that was collected in 1972 by Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last humans to have set foot on the moon. According to NASA, the rock-which is roughly 3.9 billion years old and weighs slightly less than a pound-was loaned to the White House at the request of the Biden administration "in symbolic recognition of earlier generations' ambitions and accomplishments, and support for America's current Moon to Mars exploration approach." The rock was chipped from a large boulder at the base of the North Massif in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, some two miles away from the Lunar Module. The last time a lunar rock was loaned to the White House was in 1999, when President Bill Clinton was in office, as part of a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
展开▼
