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This moon capture idea that there was already a moon body somewhere in the solar system that sort of got captured up there.

into Earth's gravitational orbit.

One thing that the Apollo samples have really done is exemplify the value of sample return missions that, you know, even after decades and decades of study, we're still learning new things about the moon and Earth-moon system and developing these alternative scenarios for the Earth-moon system forming impact.

Hmm.

I live in the realm that everything is still possible.

And it's really, really hard to completely objectively rule something out to 100% certainty.

So I'm still happy with that.

That magma ocean concept was really developed through Apollo missions and sample return.

And it is a new perspective that we've added to kind of all the rocky planets in our solar system.

The Earth may have had a magma ocean, Mars, Mercury, Venus.

The surface of the moon is this archive of deep time that we have just completely lost.

If we want to study the ancient sun, cosmic rays and galactic processes, they're being recorded on the lunar surface and in the lunar surface materials on Earth.

Anything that was happening, you know, four and a half billion years ago is gone.

We just do not have that rock record.

When you think back to the amount of surface we've been able to explore through the Apollo missions, it sums to essentially like a commute from Providence, Rhode Island to Boston, Massachusetts.

So it's like 45 minutes.

And I don't say that to de-emphasize the immense value of the Apollo missions, but to really highlight how very little of the lunar surface we've been able to explore.