A VERY AESTHETIC SLICE OF THE MOON. ...

Description

A VERY AESTHETIC SLICE OF THE MOON
NWA 2995 Paired Individual
Lunar Feldspathic Breccia
Algeria - Discovered in 2005
This specimen is a slice of a beautiful, very fresh, feldspathic fragmental breccia that contains many FHT (Feldspathic Highlands Terrain) fine-grained rock types including norite, olivine basalt, gabbro and others.
This meteorite comes from the lunar highlands which cover 84% of the Moon's surface, so meteorites from the highlands are more common than those from the "seas" or maria. In fact, over half of all known lunar meteorites originate from the FHT. This type of lunar meteorite is produced by shock-welding lunar soil (previously described above) and is composed of multple types of rock from at least four generations of impact events which successively blasted the lunar surface rock apart and re-welded it into a new breccias - repeated at least four times. There is some impact or thermal melting as well as shock-melting in pockets and veins. The source of the material for the breccia was not regolith, but deeper fragmented lunar soil with no exposure to the solar wind or cosmic rays. Because the source rocks for the lunar soil are from the highlands, only the oldest and more common lunar rock types are usually represented with ages of approximately 4.2-4.3 billion years old. This gorgeous slice has the added attraction of being virtually indistinguishable from an actual Apollo Mission moon rock with its large white anorthosite fragments being offset by the dark gray and black background matrix. This slice has a very large surface area for the weight and measures 34 x 17 mm by 1mm thick and weighs 1.40 grams. It also has a rind of desirable fusion crust on the edges. A superb, eye-catching lunar meteorite.

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