Vacuum Pump
How do they get the vacuum in there?
When humans first made the long trip to the Moon, we were more worried about whether something from out there might contaminate us back here. So in the early days there was more attention paid to quarantining returning astronauts than to keeping their returned samples free of contaminants from Earth. China's space agency is …
"What will be a bit more difficult is preparing the vacuum examination chamber, but that will be on Earth and, therefor, a pump will be available."
The absolute best vacuum pumps on the planet still can't pull anything as good as the partial pressure you find up at ISS level, let alone what's found on the moon.
Disclosure: I work with people who build/test spacecraft parts. They have these pumps.
The absolute best vacuum pumps on the planet still can't pull anything as good as the partial pressure you find up at ISS level, let alone what's found on the moon.
So, can't they run a hose up to the ISS, to pipe the vacuum down to your facilities?
"So NASA carried their samples in a box"
The samples were bagged in the box. Recall what happens when you take the air out of a freezer bag.
This is a much easier/lighter way of transporting things than having to build a (inverse) pressure vessel and transport it to the moon.
I applaud the chinese for the thought, but there are simpler ways of bringing things back from space.
Getting the vacuum is easy. Maintaining it when you return to Earth is the hard part. Even harder is getting the instruments needed for analysis into the Lunar vacuum back on Earth. (A hard Earth vacuum might not equal the Lunar Vacuum.)
If the issue is contamination of the sample then you have the problem of what contaminants do the instruments bring with them?
Solution: send an automated analysis lab to the moon. Have it expose itself to the Lunar vacuum for a period of time to remove the terrestrial contaminants. Have the lab then relocate itself to a new position where there are no residual comtaminants and then start the analysis. Report the results back to earth via radio after the analysis is complete. Do not report during the analysis as this may alter the results... No samples need to be returned to Earth.
Of course you can't do that because you would have no physical objects to put on display in museums or to sell to collectors to help recover the cost of the mission.
Mine's the one with the moonstone in the pocket.
if space vacuum is really that better than earth vacuum, we should bottle it and bring it down to earth for use in a new generation of penis enlargement devices. You could make a fortune, especially among the Chinese (who as we all know are not so well hung as us Europeans)