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From yesterday’s CNBC and the TV segment on PBS, in their Nightly Business Report with Josh Lipton.

It started with the space collection of Apollo artifacts. I wanted a moon rock to go with it. And the only legal way to get a moon rock is as a lunar meteorite. So it started with one very specific quest, but expanded a bit over time as I came to learn about the amazing stories each of these time capsules from our early solar system can tell us.

I eventually found the largest known Moon Rock on Earth from the ancient Lunar Highlands, NWA5000 was much larger than any brought back by Apollo. (image below)

And it is beautiful. The matrix looks like a black and white intaglio print of the universe rendered by a spirited yet masterful artist. This stone contains breccias within breccias, and the preferential orientation of clasts (from impact compression on the moon) lends a unique 3D appearance to flat surfaces. A generous amount of 4.5-billion year old gleaming metal is present, adding yet another striking element to nature’s artwork.

Only 0.2% of meteorites are from the moon or Mars, making them more rare than pure diamond on Earth.

6 responses to “Space Rocks! From the PBS and CNBC News”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    DetailsA Huge Slice of the Moon Also from the program, holding a rock from MarsThe second-largest Mars rock in private hands, Dar al Gani 1037 It is awe-inspiring to contemplate how it got here: an asteroid impacts Mars long ago and dislodges a rock from the Martian surface. The rock orbits the sun for millions of years in an elliptical orbit, and by luck, lands on Earth. Most of the Martian material remains in roughly a Martian orbit (for most impact angles). Interestingly, there are a similar number of meteorites from our moon and from Mars. Mars is larger, but it is in a different orbit, and its atmosphere and gravity make it more difficult for ejecta to leave the planet. Nevertheless, if you include dust, Mars and Earth exchange a ton of ancient material per year.

    And maybe that’s how life spreads across the planets.

    The formation ages of meteorites can come from their cosmic-ray exposure (CRE), measured from the nuclear products of interactions of the meteorite in space with energetic cosmic ray particles. The one i have is particularly young, having crystallized only 180 million years ago, suggesting that volcanic activity was still present on Mars at that time. Volcanic flows are the youngest part of a planet, and this one happened to be hit by an meteor impact, ejecting the youthful Mars (in the same sense that parts of Kona are the newest Earth on Earth).

    Reply
  2. Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co Avatar
    Duncan Rawlinson – Duncan.co

    Incredible!

    Reply
  3. earsplitting spiders Avatar
    earsplitting spiders

    To be one of the few people in the existence of mankind to hold a rock from Mars is amazing.

    Reply
  4. f0rbe5 Avatar
    f0rbe5

    Those moon rocks look like aerial views of disintegrating ice flows here on Earth…

    Reply
  5. samaras.meteorites Avatar
    samaras.meteorites

    can l got in touch with you sir

    Reply
  6. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    And a cool detail that NWA 5000 slices display, from Washington Univ.

    Reply

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