The facility preserves most of the 382 kilograms (842 lb) of lunar material returned over the course of Apollo program and other extraterrestrial samples, along with associated data records.

[1] A committee of the Space Science Board reviewed the idea of a lunar sample receiving laboratory and sought to address multiple concerns.

[1] In addition, space biologists and the United States Public Health Service expressed concern about "back contamination" of Earth by extraterrestrial microorganisms brought back via returning spacecraft,[2] (although many of the astronauts and scientists involved in the program were skeptical that non-terrestrial microorganisms could survive lunar conditions).

To address these issues, the committee in 1965 recommended a laboratory with limited analytical capacity and an ability to quarantine the returning astronauts and samples.

[3] To address some of these concerns, NASA dropped the requirement after Apollo 12 that samples be processed in vacuum (in favor of a simpler-to-work-in nitrogen atmosphere).

All lunar samples were moved from the LRL to Building 31 after the last Apollo mission[1] Nonetheless, there were still concerns about the adequacy of the facility and about the wisdom of maintaining the entire collection of lunar samples in a single facility that might be vulnerable to natural disasters (especially the hurricanes to which Houston is vulnerable) and military actions.

Fourteen percent of the lunar sample collection was moved to this bunker in 1976, transported secretly at night with a police escort in a specially modified passenger bus.

[3][5] The facility's storage vaults are elevated above anticipated storm-surge sea level heights to protect the samples from threats posed by hurricanes and tornadoes.