Moon rock, lunar feldspathic breccia, North West Africa
This specimen is extremely similar to the previous lot. As one might expect, NWA 12691 looks exceedingly similar to some of the Moon rocks returned to Earth by NASA’s Apollo missions. Angular shards of signature anorthite of all sizes are suspended in dark lunar regolith. The breccia seen is the result of the ongoing pulverization of the Moon from repeated asteroid impacts until one such impact ejected this piece of the Moon off into space. Only a bit finds its way to Earth; there are less than 1000 kilograms of lunar meteorites known to exist and all would fit in the back of a pick-up truck. Moon rocks are identified by textural, chemical, isotopic and mineralogical datapoints. As it regards minerals, the prominent white clasts seen in this partial slice is anorthite, which is very rare on Earth but not on the Moon. This is a nearly-square partial slice of the Moon.
70 x 75 x 4mm (2.75 x 3 x 0.1 in.) and 71.85 grams
The analysis of this meteorite was led by Dr. Anthony Irving, among the world’s foremost meteorite classification experts. The classification was published in the 108th edition of the Meteoritical Bulletin — the official registry of meteorites — which accompanies this offering.
