The Texas Tech Geosciences professor works in the lab during the day, but has an after-school job with NASA by night. Through a research grant, Seiichi Nagihara is collecting data from two Apollo missions to help give a clearer picture of what materials make up the moon.
He's an expert in studying how planetary bodies like the Earth and moon release heat. It's exactly what astronauts wanted to explore decades ago.
"They basically put instruments down into the hole and measure the heat," says Nagihara.
He says the 1969 to 1972 Apollo missions shed some light on the moon's surface, but "we have very little knowledge about the inside of the moon."
That's why the expert is now on his own mission to help dig further. He's working to determine what type of rock makes up the moon's interior, by looking at heat measurements sent back from Apollo 15 and 17. Problem is, some of that's been lose. The recovering is proving to be more like detective work.
"Of course, back then, we didn't have thumb drives or floppy disks, so all they had was gigantic magnetic tapes," says Nagihara.
Once the data is pooled, Nagihara says it may give more understanding to a leading theory that the moon was once part of Earth.
"If we know what material the moon is made of, how hot it is, then we may be able to study more about how exactly the moon separated itself from the Earth," says Nagihara.
He and three partners are working on a $45,000 research grant from NASA. It's an opportunity that doesn't come along every day.
"It's a very worthy project, so I guess yeah...I feel honored."
After collecting the missing data his team hopes to complete the project in about 1.5 years, then publish the findings.
