A natural fragment of the NWA 11303 meteorite.
Specimen Name: Northwest Africa 11303
Specimen Type: Lunar (Feldspathic Breccia)
Location of Find: Saharan Desert. Northwest Africa
Date of Find: 2017
Perfect as a gift! Who wouldn’t want to own a piece of the Moon?
NWA 11303 was discovered in March 2017 where it was purchased by Dustin Dickens from a Mauritanian meteorite dealer, no one knows to this day the exact location that the meteorite dealer found this piece of the moon but we do know that the total mass of the meteorite was 6000g.
NWA 11303 is classified as a “Lunar” meteorite because it originated from our very own Moon. Its classification as “feldspathic” means that the meteorite contains feldspar, which are aluminosilicate minerals containing varying amounts of potassium, sodium and calcium. the classification of “breccia” means that this meteorite is made from rocks made from fragments of older rocks that have been broken apart and glued back together by impacts on their parent body in this case the moon. This makes NWA 11303 among the rarest types of space rocks as the stones have to be blasted off the lunar surface by asteroid impacts where they become captured by the earths gravitational field and fall down so we can collect them.
NWA 11303 is coated by pale reddish-brown terrestrial weathering products on the outside. If you looked at a cross section of NWA 11303 you would see white to beige clasts in a dark grey, fine-grained matrix.. It is composed of angular mineral grains of anorthite, olivine, orthopyroxene, exsolved pigeonite, ferroan pigeonite, augite, ilmenite, Ti-chromite and fayalite in a partly vesicular matrix containing minor kamacite and barite. Pieces ranging from 10g to 20g have been discovered along with much smaller pieces like the ones we sell at Space Store.
Our Lunar rock comes in a small plastic casing with foam to protect each fragment. As well as a Specimen Identification Card for you to display at home.
Each of our NWA 11303 fragments is similar to the one shown in the image – however no two fragments are identical.
More information about NWA 11303 can be found at The Meteoritical Society website here.
