A Piece of the Moon

Similar to lot 134, now offered is a sample of the lunar meteorite Northwest Africa (NWA) 12691 (i.e., a chunk of the Moon ejected into an Earth-crossing orbit following an asteroid impact on the lunar surface). It was fashioned into a sphere after becoming the 12,691^st meteorite to be recovered in the Northwest African grid of the Sahara Desert to be classified and published in scientific literature.

Lunar meteorites are among the rarest objects on Earth with less than 1,200 kilograms documented. All lunar samples collected on the Apollo lunar landed missions (382 kilograms) as well as on the Soviet Luna-16, -20, and -24 missions, are the property of the United States Federal Government and Russian Federations respectively. While both countries presented gifts of Moon rocks to other countries, they were never presented to anyone in their personal capacity, with one exception; the widow of Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Russian Space Programs. That sample, three tiny pebbles of regolith collected by the Soviet unmanned Luna-16 probe, sold in these rooms twice, first in 1993 for $440,000, and again in these rooms, in 2018 for $855,000. This means that other than aforementioned sample, the only way to legally obtain a piece of moon rock, is to purchase one of the tiny few that have journeyed to Earth on their own.

Lunar meteorite specimens are identified by specific geological, mineralogical, chemical and radiation signatures. The lunar origin of this specimen was determined by several scientists whose work is vetted by a panel of colleagues prior to publication in the Meteoritical Bulletin, the journal of record. Many of the common minerals found on Earth’s surface are rare on the Moon; in addition, lunar rocks contain gases originating from the solar wind with isotope ratios that are markedly different than the same gases found on Earth. As would be imagined, some of the lunar samples returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts closely resemble some lunar meteorites — and this is one such example. Abundant anorthosite inclusions are in evidence — which are rare on Earth and common on the Moon — as well as clasts of olivine, pigeonite, augite and ilmenite, all of which are suspended in a melt of dark charcoal-hued lunar regolith (lunar soil). The brecciated structure is the result of the crushing effect of multiple asteroid impacts on the lunar surface prior to the impact which ejected this material off of the Moon into space and then onwards to Earth.

As lunar samples are extremely rare, they must be carefully conserved and curated. As there is a great deal of material loss in the sphere fabrication process, such sphere-making would never have been possible were it not for a recent discovery of a large lunar strewn field which nearly doubled the total weight of all lunar meteorites previously known. As a result of the bounty provided by this ancient meteorite shower, an opportunity was provided to create a limited number of lunar spheres. It is not known when another lunar meteorite is found whose total weight is sufficiently high to consider the fabrication of further spheres. Measuring almost exactly one inch in diameter, it would be challenging to find a more captivating and uncommon extraterrestrial treasure than this spherical presentation of the Moon.

The official classification of this lunar meteorite appears in the 108^th edition of the Meteoritical Bulletin. A copy of the publication accompanies this offering.