My name is Ryan Zeigler. I'm the Apollo curator and I take care of NASA's Moon rocks. As a geologist, we
like to study rocks, we like an excuse to be outside, we like an excuse to study something
cool, and there isn't much cooler than Moon rocks. The Apollo samples have taught us a lot about the
Moon for the last 50 years. We've had orbital missions that have taught us even more about
the Moon and now we're ready to go back and get samples from new places on the Moon that will
answer questions that we can't answer right now with the collection we have. I just think these are
the coolest samples ever and that I like taking care of them to make sure that all the hard work
that's gone into them over the last 50 years is not lost and therefore uh enables more people to
study them in the future. The best part of this job is getting to go in the lab and actually see the
samples. I mean a lot of this job is hard you have to take really good care of things if you goof up
you've damaged the samples forever so there's there's a fair amount of stress that goes with
it, but then you get to go in and you get to see new samples when they're opened or you get to hand
out samples to people and they make these amazing scientific discoveries and while they did most of
the hard work that you know that they wouldn't have been fully successful without help and so
being able to help that's really the best part of the day. My job has taken me all over the world,
all over Europe, including some really unusual places like Vietnam or Japan or Australia so
I've gotten to go all these different places as part of being the Apollo curator. It's cool that
I'm entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of these rocks on behalf of the American
people and it's me and the rest of my team's job to take care of them so that they are preserved
and that they are well used and that's really an honor. If there are kids out there who love
rocks, if you've got a rock collection, if you want to really study rocks then do more than
just pick up pretty rocks. Try to learn what the rocks are made out of. Try to identify the
individual minerals inside through minerology or or what the textures inside the rocks are through
what's called petrography, which is a study of the textures inside the rocks cause that's how you can
take your collection of rocks and turn it into a more you know into a career someday. I think
most little kids wanted to be an astronaut and I loved space and I loved NASA and I always wanted
to work here and then when I got into geology and I found out there was a chance to actually
study Moon rocks that just it I never looked back. as soon as I like started down that path
it was all moon rocks all the time. When this job opened up 12 years ago and I was like oh that's
what I want to do. That's my dream job and so uh people often ask me what do you want to do next
and I'm like you know I'm good I'm happy where I am. I'm really this is this is the job I love.