Solar Wind Composition Experiment

[2] The SWC was proposed and designed by a Swiss team headed by Johannes Geiss and Peter Eberhardt of the University of Bern and Peter Signer of the Swiss Institute of Technology.

The SWC experiment consisted of a 1 ft × 4.6 ft (0.30 m × 1.40 m) sheet of ultra-pure aluminum foils (also with platinum metal segments on the last Apollo 16 experiment) erected on the Moon's surface with a telescopic pole.

The sheet was to be exposed to the Sun as to measure the ion types and energies of the solar wind on the lunar surface.

At the end of the exposure the foil was detached from the telescopic pole, placed in a Teflon bag, and brought back to Earth for analysis.

The experiment was successful and provided accurate He, Ne and Ar isotopic compositions of the solar wind.