  Tantalum-180m is nature's rarest (quasi) stable isotope and its astrophysical
origin is an open question. A possible production site of this isotope is the
slow neutron capture process in Asymptotic Giant Branch stars, where it can be
produced via neutron capture reactions on unstable $^{179}$Ta. We report a new
measurement of the $^{179}$Ta($n,\gamma$)$^{180}$Ta cross section at thermal
neutron energies via the activation technique. Our results for the thermal and
resonance-integral cross-sections are 952 $\pm$ 57 b and 2013 $\pm$ 148 b,
respectively. The thermal cross section is in good agreement with the only
previous measurement (Phys. Rev C {\bf 60} 025802, 1999), while the resonance
integral is different by a factor of $\approx$1.7. While neutron energies in
this work are smaller than the energies in a stellar environment, our results
may lead to improvements in theoretical predictions of the stellar cross
section.
