ST. LOUIS – Forty years after the Apollo 11 astronauts made their

historic lunar landing, the rocks they collected are still helping

researchers learn more about the moon, the solar system, even

about how life on Earth began.

But if not for a St. Louis scientist and a few of his colleagues,

NASA may never have collected moon rocks in the first place.

It was 40 years ago Monday that Neil Armstrong first set foot on

the dusty lunar surface, announcing it was a small step for a man

but "a giant leap for mankind." During that mission, the astronauts

scooped up rocks and dirt from the moon and brought the material

back home for study.

"It all started with Apollo 11," said Randy Korotev, a lunar

geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis, where hundreds

of moon rocks are still stored and studied. "Apollo 11 answered a

tremendous amount of scientific questions, but it also introduced

new questions we hadn't even thought about."

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