Thirty New Educational Disks

In October of 1998, thirty new lunar educational disks were produced under an agreement with NASA Headquarters for distribution as requested to the Educational Centers.

Andrea Mosie and Linda Watts worked many laboratory hours preparing the small samples of basalt, breccia, anorthosite, Highland soil, Mare soil, and orange soil for use in the new educational disks.  Andrea and Linda carried the prepared samples to Clear Float, Inc. in South Attleboro, MA. Clear Float, a family owned and operated company, does excellent encapsulation work. Mrs. Jessie Murphy owns the company and her son, Tim, is the president.

The last of the previous 201 lunar educational disks were prepared at Clear Float in 1979. All of the workers who had assisted previously with the lunar samples are no longer there except for Erna Gomez.  She prepared and packaged the completed products for shipment to JSC.

With the competent help of Clear Float’s staff, Karen Owens and Chris Salvas, the process of preparing the disks began.  Andrea and Linda carefully placed each sample into a mold that was partially filled with acrylic. Each sample mold was annotated as to sample type and sample number. Then, the samples were covered with acrylic and placed in an oven to cure. The six different singularly encapsulated samples, disk number tags, and sample type tags were the placed into the 6-inch molds using the same procedure as before. After the disks were cured, they were polished to a fine finish by Clear Float’s Wayne Hazerty.

The trip was a pleasant experience due to our Lockheed Martin secretary, Helen Klyng, Clear Float’s office manger, Cathy Gadoury, and all of the friendly and helpful people of Clear Float.  The wonderful scenery with the trees in beautiful Fall colors also added tremendously to the trip.