A natural fragment of the Lunar Meteorite – NWA 10986.
Specimen Name: Northwest Africa 10986
Specimen Type: Mingled Lunar
Location of Find: Western Sahara, Northern Africa
Date of Find: 2015
Perfect as a gift! Who wouldn’t want to own a piece of the Moon?
NWA 10986 was discovered on the 15th of November 2015 in Grarat Zawi, Western Sahara. The entirety of NWA 10986 only weighs 108.2g and the piece available at space store is 6g meaning that it is over 5.5% of the entire meteorite!
NWA 10986 is classified as a “Lunar” meteorite because it originated from our very own Moon which makes it rare because the only way for us to get these lunar rocks is for the rocks 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 10986 is a highland impact-melt breccia with an unusually large amount of impact-generated glass and clasts as large as 1.4mm, these clasts represent 40% of the meteorite and have been partially-to-completely consumed during multiple impact and melting events. The clasts are plagioclase-rich with pyroxenes, olivines, spinel, and ilmenite in ophitic to poikilitic textures. Large broken plagioclase grains and small olivines and pyroxenes are found within the matrix and the clasts represent both highland and basalt lithologies. It displays multiple generations of melting and breccia-in-breccia formation
If you were to cut NWA 10986 open you would see it has brown to black devitrified glass swirls encompassing heavily fragmented white clasts with a light grey base colouring. On the outside you would see a rough light grey surface covered in yellow and white discolorations which are the clasts showing through.
Our Lunar rock comes in a small plastic casing with foam to protect the fragment as well as a Specimen Identification Card for you to display at home.
More information about NWA 10986 can be found at The Meteoritical Society website here.
