Lunar Receiving Laboratory

The quarantine requirement was dropped for Apollo 15 and later missions. The LRL was used for study, distribution, and safe storage of the lunar samples. Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo space flight missions brought back 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand, and dust from the lunar surface—in all, 2,200 samples from six exploration sites. Other lunar samples were returned to Earth by three automated Soviet spacecraft, Luna 16 in 1970, Luna 20 in 1972, and Luna 24 in 1976, which returned samples totaling 300 grams (about 3/4 pound).

In 1976, some of the samples were moved to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for second-site storage. In 1979, a Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility was built to serve as the chief repository for the Apollo samples: permanent storage in a physically secure and non-contaminating environment. The facility includes vaults for the samples and records, and laboratories for sample preparation and study. The Lunar Receiving Laboratory building was later occupied by NASA's Life Sciences division, contained biomedical and environment labs, and was used for experiments involving human adaptation to microgravity.

In September 2019, NASA announced that the Lunar Receiving Laboratory had not been used for two years and would be demolished.